


That Others Might Live

by C130



Category: Cars (Movies), Planes (Movies)
Genre: Density Altitude, Engine Faluire, Fire, Gearbox Faluire, Gen, Whumping
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-08
Updated: 2017-01-20
Packaged: 2018-07-22 10:03:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 11
Words: 23,779
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7431654
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/C130/pseuds/C130
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>With the worst fire in Piston Peak's living memory sweeping through the national park, not one but three aircraft are in deep trouble. It is quickly becoming doubtful that all members of the National Park's Air Attack team will make it safely home.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. That Others Might Live

Piston Peak National Park was going up into flames, lives were at stake, and Blade Ranger was grounded. The waterlines were cut, the rest of the Piston Peaks Fire Attack Team were off making a dangerous night flight across the flames to try to rescue an unknown number of trapped visitors, and Blade Ranger was still grounded. According to Maru he really should still be in his hanger trying to regain his strength after nearly bleeding on his hydraulics dry, but the big helicopter couldn’t help but roll out to his favorite overlook to try to get a glimpse of what was going on. The sight wasn’t pretty. Even through the dark and the smoke choked sky Blade could see just how quickly the fire was spreading.

Below him he could see Maru, nervously pacing and muttering under his breath. Blade knew that these types of missions stress Maru out to no end. That every time they went out on a rare night mission their mechanic would nearly have a fit of worry convinced that one or more of them would clip a tree or get too close to the canyon’s edge. He could also see Patch in the control tower pulling out maps and switching between radio set ups. It was pretty clear that their communication’s expert was rapidly reaching task saturation with all of the inputs and information coming in from around the park. Blade was starting to wonder if Maru would allow him to at least take a load off of Patch, by transferring some off the communication traffic down stairs to the main hanger, when the Piston Peak Fire Attack radio channel crackled to life.

 _“Windlifter, do you copy?*”_ Patch’s stressed but calm voice came across loud and clear.

 _“Go ahead, Patch.*”_ The large helicopter’s voice muffled by distance, but readable.

_“We’ve got two old RV’s trapped in Augerin Canyon.*”_

_“Two old RVs? Oh, no.*”_ Dusty’s rapid fire voice followed, his words stumbling with stress as he spoke. _“It’s Harvey and Winnie, We met them earlier. They’re looking for the place they had their first kiss.*”_

_“Augerin Canyon. That’s at the other end of the park.*”_

_“I can get there the fastest.*”_ At Dusty’s words, Blade couldn’t keep his heart from sinking. Crophopper was a trainee and this was a mission that even a seasoned firefighter would struggle to complete without backup.

“The canyon will be engulfed in flames and you have no retardant.*” Windlifter was clearly trying to be a voice of reason.

 _“I’ll scoop off the river.*”_ The little plane spoke and it was pretty clear at this point that Dusty wasn’t going to change his mind, and Blade was already rolling down the tarmac. _“There is a clear stretch of water. Windlifter I can do it.*”_

 _“Go. And be safe.*_ ” Windlifter’s sounded completely resigned, but Blade swore that he could detect a note of worry in the helicopter’s voice.

“Maru, fuel me up.” Blade called out as he drove up to the fueling station.

“Blade…” Maru rolled out of the workshop with his ‘I am on the war path’ look on, but stopped short when he got a good look at Blade.

“We don’t have time for this. Dusty’s out there trying to rescue a pair of trapped RV’s and I would prefer to have more than a half a tank when I head out.” Maru looked up at Blade, his eyes filled with both understanding and hurt. Then the mechanic hooked up. Even though a lot of the equipment at their base of operation was old or cobbled together, their fueling and tank systems were top of the line. Everyone knew that they could survive leaks in their hangers, but when battling fires shaving a few seconds off the time when they were filling with avgas or load retardant could be the difference between life and death.

“Thank you.” Blade sighed once his tanks were comfortable full.

“Just make sure that both of you come back in one piece.”

“I will do my best.” Then with the whine of rotors and the thunder of prop wash, Blade Ranger keyed his mike and took to the sky. “Patch, I am heading to support Champ at Augerin Canyon.”

* * *

As Windlifter watched Dusty fly into the maelstrom of smoke and fire, the helicopter could help but have a sinking feeling in his drive shaft. Flying at night was dangerous enough. Flying at night over a fire was a downright death trap unless you have had decades of training. Still, Windlifter didn’t have much time to worry little M-18 Dromader. He had his own mission to complete. Glancing back at the two companions he had left, he knew it was going to be a challenge.

Lil’ Dipper seemed to be faring the best. Whether the modified Grumman G-21 Goose realized it or not, she was probably the aircraft that was best build for this particular mission. Her amphibious nature had gifted her with an abnormally strong frame and lift capability. Her time on choppy seas had given her a stomach of iron, and her air intake system allowed her to pull most of the air from the top of her structure which didn’t do much about the smoke, but did slow the ash and ember accumulation on her filters.

Despite all of Dipper’s specialized modifications, you could see that she was wheezing and the way she winced every time they were buffeted by another fire induced turbulent. Dipper was hurting, but she wasn’t in any immediate danger. Caddie, on the other hand was starting to look like he had just flown through a thunderstorm and Windlifter suspected that if he got closer the Fairchild C-119 Boxcar could would here the airplanes engine laboring.

“Caddie, how are the winds treating you my friend?” Windlifter spoke fearing what he would hear.

“Been better.” Caddie coughed, which in Caddie speak translated into I am in trouble get me on the ground as soon as possible. Sandwiched between the two other aircraft Dipper’s engines whined indicated that she was choking on smoke once again.

Windlifter banked to the right and tried to gain them both time and altitude. Caddie had to be his first priority. The cargo plane may have had been a firefighting aircraft for most of his post military life, but there was a reason why he was the last C-119 fighting fires anywhere in the world. They had a bad habit of falling out of the sky or pin wheeling across the tarmac upon landing after fighting a bad fire.

The Sikorsky S-64 Skycrane glanced back at Caddie who was starting to lag farther and farther behind as they increased their rate of climb, then he looked over the burning park. As leader, there was no way that he was going to drag Caddie back across the sea of flames. They were going to have to find another airport to land at. They needed a location that could not only handle Caddies immense size but also clear their intake systems, there was only one airport in the vicinity that fit the bill.

“We turn south and make an emergency landing at Piston Flats Airstrip.”

“What?” Dipper stammered. “But what about home?”

“Home will wait until morning. For now we need to get ourselves out of the smoke and on the ground.” Windlifter spoke with the authority of Blade’s second in command. “Dipper, you know the way to the Airstrip.”

“Yes…but…” The Amphibious aircraft tried to argue, but was cut short. “Then lead the way. Cabbie will take the center position and I will be at the rear.” Windlifter knew that if either plane got into too much trouble and went down there was little that he could do to stop their descent, but he did have the power to hover over them and insure that their rescue was swift.

“Yes sir.” Dipper aligned herself to the new heading and Windlifter turned his attention to the communication channels. He first informed Patches that they were diverting to the south, then he got Piston Flats Airstrip on the horn and made sure the runways were cleared and the local crash response team was mobilized just in case their cargo plane landed rough.

“I could have made it back…” Caddie muttered under his breaths between sputtering coughs. Once they had left the roar of the fire behind it had become easier to hear just how labored the C-119’s engine functions had become and Windlifter became more confident that he had made the correct choice diverting.

“It is observed that in any great endeavor it is not enough for a person to depend solely on himself.” Windlifter replied as he ushered his fellow aircraft towards the safety of the alternate airstrip.

* * *

Dusty was pretty sure that he had only been this terrified once, and that was when he was trying to fly through a tropical storm. That said, when he had taken on the storm, he was at sea level with a healthy engine. This was a completely different situation. Now he was flying at 80 percent capacity through a firestorm, and to make things worse instead of just putting one life on the line three lives were currently relying on his flight skills.

The rest of the Air Attack team where chattering way on the radio but Dusty tuned them out. He needed to focus every fiber of his being on not being slammed into of the canyons by an unexpected draft or swatted out of the air by a falling flaming tree.

The former cropduster had spent pretty much powerless as he watched the bridge in front of him falling apart. The only reason the two RV’s were still alive was the fact that the Chief had crested the ridge and used his host to prevent the two vehicles from plunging into the flaming canyon below. Blade had bought him a few precious seconds and Dusty was going to make the most of them.

Going vertical he flew up the fall skirting both water and death. Once he reached to top, he continued traveling to the sky until he completely stalled out and started plummeting back to earth. Dusty used that momentum. Capturing the precious energy he put himself into a dive that pushed him quicker to the edge of the bridge were he dumped the payload dead on target.

* * *

“Dusty.” Blade caught the attention of the small aircraft that was currently circling to gain altitude. The big helicopter then gave his trainee the best complement he could think of. “Good move, partner.”

With the RV’s were safely sheltered in the tunnels and Windlifter supporting taking the lead of the rest of the team, Blade could finally relax and let his body admit just how off balance he felt. He was really going to enjoy going back to the hanger and getting a few hours of sleep before taking on the fire first thing…Chrysler!

One moment Dusty was sleepily trying to gain altitude so they could head home, the next his prop ceased up, his engine was smoking, and the kid was making an uncontrolled decent towards the trees. Blade tried to react, he screamed Dusty’s name as soon as he realized what was happening but didn’t have a chance to move before he started to hear the sickening crack of aircraft against pinion pine. In these types of situations there was only one thing that the Air Ops leader could do…call for help.

“Mayday, Mayday, Mayday. Champ is down. I repeat Champ is down. Our coordinates are…” Blade glanced down at his read out. “Tree Seven Dot Five One North, One One Niner Dot Five Eight Seven West. I repeat 37.751 N, 119.587 W. Mayday, Mayday, Mayday.”

* * *

_“Come on Dusty don’t do this to my. Respond. Mayday, Mayday, Mayday. Champ is down. I repeat Champ is down. Our coordinates are Tree Seven...”_

“Blade this is Patch. We hear both your distress call and Champ’s ELT loud and clear. Your position has been plotted. Can you give us any more information about Champ’s current condition?”

 _“Unknown.”_ Blade’s voice quavered as though he was trying to keep panic from completely overtaking him. _“One moment we were completing the RV rescue and the next moment his rotor ceased up, his engine was smoking, and made an uncontrolled approach into the trees. He is currently not responding to radio or verbal communications.”_

“Do you have eyes on him? Can you tell us about what types of damage you can see?”

 _“You know I am not equipped for this!”_ Blades frustration was palpable and Patch couldn’t help but wonder just how blind the helicopter was in the smoke and fire filled night.

“Calm down, I know you are not a night flyer but we are doing this by the protocol.” Patch flipped open the binder and started at the top of the crash response checklist. “Do you have eyes on Crophopper 7?”

 _“No. If I squint I can see where I think he first hit the trees, but the forest is too thick for me to spot him.”_ The Air Ops leader admitted. _“But I saw him go down and his ELT across the emergency channels so I know he is in serious trouble.”_

“Based on that information I am going to give you two options Blade. The first return the base.” Patch could hear a displeased grunt at the suggestion. “The other is for you to stay out there, but if you take option two you are going to need to find a safe place to land and stay on the ground until either morning hits or your location is threatened.” There was a very long pause. “Blade I need you to give me a verbal response.”

_“I have located a place to land. I will remain on station until help arrives.”_

“Roger that, Blade Ranger. We will get help too you as quickly as we can.” Once Patch had completed her transition with Blade Ranger, she turned her attention to the next order of business, getting more help. At first she turned to the radio only to discover that the repeater that allowed her to reach out to her fellow dispatchers across the west was no longer functional. She reached for the phone instead and gave a call to the Interagency Fire Center in Idaho to let them know that they needed to bring in the big guns.

* * *

“Windlifter, we have to go back.” Dipper had finally gotten to the point begged, but to her credit had not deviated from her course.

“We will remain as a team.” Windlifter stated again.

“Then we can go back as a team.” Dipper pleaded.

“We need to go back to help Dusty.” Who might already be dead, Windlifter thought but didn’t verbalize. As much as he would like to help, an aircraft close to 50 miles away couldn’t be his priority.

“We are…”

“If we go back now you will be scrapping two planes off the cliffs instead of one.” Cabbie interjected from in between them. That comment shut down the argument rather quickly.

“Cabbie, please explain?” Windlifter rumbled trying to figure what else had gone wrong.

“I passed bingo on fuel about 5 minutes ago. So my current choices are straight ahead or straight in the ground.” Cabbie wheezed. “Your pick.”

“Why was this not communicated?”

“Would it have made any difference?” Cabbie sighed unhappily.

Windlifter thought for a few moments before replying. “No.”

“Then why should I make a fuss about it. I did the math and the density altitude with all that smoke was killing me. So, I made sure that I had enough fuel to get back to either home or an alternate base while still being light enough carry the jumpers over the hot spots but not a pint more.”

Ford, Windlifter thought to himself, he really didn’t realize just how close to the razors edge that had taken on this rescue mission. He also hoped that Blade never intended to retire, because after tonight the flying crane was pretty sure he really didn’t want to be Air Boss again.


	2. Out of Gas

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Things go from bad to worse for Windlifter's team when Cabbie looses an engine. It becomes a race against time to see how quickly they can get the cargo plane on the ground. Mean while an already overwhelmed Patch prepares to accept the first waves of mutual aid.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There are a few OCs that will be popping up in this chapter. The OCs in this story will remain pretty minor.

_“Piston Peaks Mission Base, Piston Peaks Mission Base, this is CAP Niner Eight Kilo, Over.”_

“Want now!” Patch swore under her breath and thumbed radio to reply. She really didn’t have the time right now to deal with lookiloos, even ones with Search and Rescue callsigns. “CAP Niner Eight Kilo, Piston Peak’s air space is closed to all nonessential personal, Over.”

_“Roger that Piston Peaks, we will not enter airspace until authorized but I should let you know that I have been permission to use lifeguard status and are highbird capable, Over.”_

“I will notify the fire boss…Wait, we?” Patch began and realized that she had left the transmission hang. “We? Over.”

_“The incoming Guard, and Civil Air Patrol aircraft. Over.”_

“Wait? When did they get sent in?” Patch asked, the timeline not adding up. Her call for mutual aid had only been made less than ten minutes ago. The closes aid was more than an hour’s flight away. There was no way that help should have arrived so soon.

 _“We were mobilized, when we realized your long distance radios went dead and we started to get scattered reports of stranded vehicles due to late evacuation orders. By the look and sound of things it seems like we were not sent in vain.”_ There was a slight pause by approaching aircraft. “ _I am currently picking up an emergency beacon. Do you have a location on the downed aircraft’s ELT or do we need to pull in a plane that is Becker capable? Over.”_

“The down aircraft is one of our own.” Patch admitted softly, but there was no time to dwell on the mess the Air Attack team had gotten itself into. “We had eyes on him when he went down so no Becker is needed. I will get the fire boss on the horn and see where you will be most useful.”

_“Wilco, Piston Peaks Mission Base. CAP Niner Eight Kilo, Out.”_

The forklift put down the radio permanently tuned to the mutual aid frequency and picked Air Attack set up. “Windlifter, do you copy.” “Windlifter, the cavalry has arrived. I repeat the cavalry has arrived.”

* * *

 

_“Windlifter, the cavalry has arrived. I repeat the cavalry has arrived.”_

“Who are they, and what is their ETA?” The Skycrane asked, his eyes glued Caddie and Dipper.

 _“They are mix of Guard and CAP aircraft. Give me a moment and I will get back to you on the ETA.”_ Patch stopped speaking on their radio frequency for a good 3-4 minutes before her voice came back in a cloud of static.“ _Windlifter do you read?”_

“You are starting to break up Patch, but for now I can hear you well enough for our needs.”

 _“Good to know.”_ Patch paused for a moment in a way that usually meant that she was taking notes. _“There is a highbird standing by on the east side of the park and it looks like we have ten night helos with bucket capability in route, two fixed wing spotters that should arrive at the south east side of the park in 20 minutes._ ” Patch rattled off the information that she had gleaned. _“According to the chatter we will also be getting an Evergreen Supertanker flying over at dawn and that we can expect some additional support staff arriving a little bit later in the morning.”_

“Very good.” Windlifter replied, this was a fire that really needed to be fought from the air to be contained. “Blade, did you copy Patch’s last message.”

“Roger. Get the highbird in position. It will be a whole lot easier for Windlifter to coordinate things.” The Helitankers voice broke through the static, but the Skycrane didn’t really hear what was being said. Instead he was busy watching a situation going from bad to worse. “As far as I concerned, I with half the park currently in flames and our only ground evacuation path currently in jeopardy, I will admit that I am pretty grateful they are coming…” There was a whoop of an alarm in the background causing Patch to pause. In front of him Windlifter watched as Cabbie’s right engine went from running rough to complete dead. “ _Who just started squaking 7700?”_

“Cabbie! Cabbie are you alright.” Dipper asked as she banked sharply to the left trying to get a good look at the limping plane.

Cabbie didn’t respond verbally, but he did at least double-key his mike in response. This meant that cargo plane was listening to them, but was too task saturated at the moment to have a conversation. Before their eyes they could see the big plane adjusting his angle and surfaces to maximize his glide ratio. Only once his flight path was stabilized did Cabbie try to restart his engine and Windlifter focused his attention on communicating the emergency to the air field ahead.

“Pan, Pan, Pan. This is Tanker Tree Tree Whiskey escorting Jumper Papa Papa Foxtrot Fife One Heavy. Jumper has an engine out, I repeat, Jumper has engine out. In bound to Piston Flats Airstrip, ETA 15 minutes.”

“I know that it is technically allowed in aviation, but I really need to break you all of the habit of saying repeat over the radio.” Cabbie gave a pained shuttering cough, but somehow remained in perfect gliding form. “It keeps making me think that I am about to get shot at.”

* * *

The TSMT was going to have a field day. Between two crashes, an in air incident that was going to require an emergency landing (and better not turn into a crash), night time fire operations by a day flight only qualified team, and the evacuation of an entire National Park, Blade was not looking forward to shear amount of paperwork he was going to have to fill out once this was over. Especially since the incident command system had kind of been thrown out the window when the situation had devolved.

Patch was really the person who was really staying on top of the situation. The Logistic’s Section Chief was doing her best to keep tabs on the entire park. She not only knew where all of the Air Attack firefighters were, but where the lodge’s fire crew, the various rangers, and national park’s road crew were. She was the first one to report that the loss of various structures, from campgrounds to one of the visitor centers, around the park.

The face of Piston Peaks, Blade Ranger’s home 16 years, his responsibility for 8 was being permanently changed. The only comfort that he had as he watched the hills around him burn was the fact there had been no reported loss of life. There was still a chance that when fires were out and the ash finally out the investigators would discover the burned out wreck of someone who hadn’t gotten the evacuation orders in time, or who had simply not paid attention to them.

Blade refused to admit, that right now there was a good chance that Dusty might become a torched airframe. If the wind shifted just a little bit, the fire could easily sweep over the ridge and light the ponderosa pines like Roman candles. With no retardant or access to water, all Blade Ranger could do at the moment was sit, listening to the radio, pray that the winds would stay steady, and hope that Dusty Crophopper would hurry and wake up so the helo could stop worrying.

* * *

It was called task saturation for a reason. Patch was a dispatcher, and a darn good one at that, but there was only so much that a single person could do in these situations. She hadn’t even noticed when Maru had managed to slip into the tower and took over the delicate job of getting the Highbird in place. But there he was, keeping up a constant stream of chatter to make sure the plane wasn’t suffering from hypoxia as it soared up to over 10,000 feet AGL (above ground level).

Maru’s presence gave Patch enough mental wiggle room to stop thinking in the present and start thinking just a little bit a head. She was about to have an aft-ton of support pouring into the park’s boundaries. The trick would be to send them where they would make the most good. The protecting the entrance road had to be the first priority as long as they were still evacuating tourists. Protecting their downed trainee SEAT was of course another huge priority which was followed closely with the need to protect the Air Attack Mission Base so the park had at least one functional air strip in the park for emergencies.

Using the lodge airstrip was completely out of the question now. Based on a panicked series of text messages that Patch had gotten from Cad, all six of the fuel tanks near the lodge were currently on fire. When the Park Superintendent ordered Patch to fix the problem, she had coolly informed him that there was nothing that the Air Attack Team could do and that he going to have to wait for Mutual Aid to arrive. Though, she suspected that even when aid arrived they may just cut the fuel lines to insure that the flames didn’t spread further, surround the tank with foam, and then let the fire burn itself out.

The mechanic shifted from the radio set and grabbed the tower’s telephone. Based on Maru’s tone of voice, Patch suspected that he was on the horn with Piston Flats Airstrip trying to figure out if Cabbie had successfully made it on the ground. Both forklifts knew that the loss of an engine was a real but manageable problem. The C-119 did luckily have positive climb characteristics even when flying with one engine. Their cargo plane should be fine as long as he didn’t lose the other one. That said, Cabbie was a C-119. The aircraft were known for being pretty reliable…right up until the moment that they weren’t.

* * *

“Cabbie, what do you need me to do?” Windlifter asked as he hovered as close as he dared to the laboring aircraft. Even though he couldn’t see Dipper, he knew at the moment she was circling the air strip ready to chase away stray planes ignored the towers statement that the airstrip was closed to handle and emergency landing.

“Talk to the tower for me please, I am about to get pretty task saturated again.” Cabbie spoke with a voice was that barely more than a harsh whisper and his with eyes glued on the primary runway, then, almost as an afterthought he added. “And make sure that they have a fuel truck handy. I think I just ran out of fumes.”

Despite running on one engine, Cabbie still managed to perform a perfect cross runway approach and banked right for final. Then the other engine sputtered out. Dipper gave let out a very unladylike string of curses that would even make an air carrier blush. Windlifter did his best to remain calm. The chopper backed off to make sure that his down draft wouldn’t harm Cabbie’s glide. It wasn’t enough. Watching the rate that Cabbie was sinking, the cargo plane was going to come up short.

There was a horrible screeching sound as wood scrapped and splintered against metal, but the C-119 didn’t even bat an eye. He kept his nose slightly up as he made minor adjustments to his trim to compensate for the momentum he was losing to the tree tops. Caddie was still going to miss the tarmac, but he had conserved enough power to at least make to the blast pad.

Once over the trees, Caddie quickly dropped his nose parallel to the ground and controlled his speed completely with his flaps. He was still coming in steep enough that everyone was holding their breath. There was so much that could go wrong when an aircraft landed without power, especially an aircraft with as large as Cabbie.

Then cargo plane tires crunched as they made contact with the yellow and black chevrons. Cabbie bounced and then skidded as he threw on the brakes. For a moment it looked like he was going to slid off the runway and into the grass, but the old plane feathered his brakes. Cabbie came to a complete stop on the tarmac, then he closed his eyes and sighed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hurrah! I made my writing goal and successfully posted a chapter two weeks in a row. I will continue trying to keep up this pace but I will not promise anything. Thank you to everyone who left kudos and thank you for reading.
> 
> Onto the only only reason to really read the end note, the stuff about aerospace. Today's topic is task saturation. Task saturation is a pretty common occurrence for people working in emergency services. It happens when you simply have too much input and your brain doesn't know what to do with it. So far in this story three characters have found themselves buried aft deep saturation, and as I am posting this chapter I realized each of the three represent one of the typical copping mechanisms that people usually have to these types of crisis. 
> 
> The first person get completely overwhelmed was of course Dusty. Dusty is a great example of someone who frozen when they got task saturated. While this is considered to be the most harmless of copping mechanisms on the ground, it is the most dangerous in the air. This is because pilots who freeze in an emergency loose their situational awareness, leaving their aircraft to fly into the ground. Watching Dusty's crash there was a lot of stuff he could have done to make a reasonable emergency tree landing when his engine went out. Instead he panic and went pinwheeling through the pines instead.
> 
> The second person to really get task saturated is Patch. She exhibits signs of being a compartmentalizer. People or forklifts with this type of coping mechanism start having a hard time looking at the big picture. As a result they will start having a hard time figuring out where all the pieces fit and will sometimes completely loose track of where resources are. A compartmentalizer can put their entire team in a lot of danger if the problem is not identified. Luckily the Piston Peak Attack Team is a tight knit little family and Maru has stepped in to take some of the load to allow Patch to recover. 
> 
> The third example is Cabbie. Cabbie, like many military pilots, is a channeller. These group of people become hyperfocused on a single problem when they get task saturated and will pretty much ignore everything else. They get into trouble when the stop communicating and loose the ability to see other problems sneaking up on them...like a second engine going out. Still, out of the three if you are in a plane and your pilot gets task saturated in an emergency pray that they are a channeller because they are the most likely to get you back firmly on the ground.
> 
> From personal experience I know that I am a channeller. How do you think that you would deal with task saturation? What types of coping mechanisms do you think that the rest of the attack team use?


	3. In the Dark of Night

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cabbie is finally back on the ground, but that doesn't mean that the Piston Peak Air Attack is out of danger. Still, in the dark of night and with the fire still raging there was nothing that anyone could to to help Dusty, but try to get a good night's sleep and be ready to fly at dawn.

Windlifter had had to turn down the audio level on his mike the moment it was clear that Caddie had successfully set down. Between the tower crew, the emergency response team, and Dipper the cheering had been deafening. Even though the big helicopter had seen Cabbie do emergency landings a few times like that in the past, the plane usually ran into some sort of problem in the air about once every 2 to 3 years, the C-119's ability stick this type of landing still never ceased to amaze Windlifter.

With the compromised member of their team safely on the ground, Dipper had been given the go ahead to land on the grassy auxiliary strip while Windlifter had been given permission to land on the tarmac of the main strip as long as he stayed out of the airport's emergency response team way. The Skycrane decided to overfly Cabbie and flew further down the runway, where it appeared to clearer.

Unlike Cabbie's, Windlifter's landing was uneventful. On his wheels he rolled closer to the downed plane. Under the harsh glare of the spotlights the C119 was a mess. Smoke and ash streaked everything, and the craft's silver underbelly was pocked with char marks from flying cinders. In short, Cabbie looked like he had just flown through a volcano, and with the concerned glances that the airport's responders were giving him, Windlifter suspected he probably looked nearly as bad. After all of this was over everyone on the Piston Peak's Air Attack team was going to need not only a bath, but also good coat of paint.

"Cabbie, how are you my friend."

"Better now that they have gotten one of my air intakes unclogged." He nodded hoarsely towards a mechanic who was currently poking the removed filter. "I haven't had to stick a landing like that since 'Nam.'"

Windlifter tried to get a bit more information out of the cargo hauler about what exactly had gone wrong, but by this point the big planes eyes were squeezed shut in pain as a member of the response team probed another one of his air intakes. The blacked mess finally came free causing Cabbie to dissolve into a coughing fit bad enough that the C-119 had to lock his brakes to keep from rolling into the fire tender near his tail.

Assured that Cabbie's was being well taken care of, even though the plane was still not going to be getting off the ground any time soon, the Skycrane set off to make sure Dipper was okay. Hopefully by the time he had checked in with her, the highbird would be in place and he could check in with the mission base.

* * *

The deployment of the highbird significantly altered the communication landscape of the fire. Patch was able to transfer the Piston Peak Attack Team's radio traffic from the nonfunctional park repeater to the mobile repeater in CAP Niner Eight Kilo's fuselage. The dispatcher was also able to tie into several of the other communication nets.

It was comforting to be able to listen to the chatter of both air and ground staff that were on their way to help. It was also a huge relief to Blade, Windlifter, and her to find out that the County Fire Chief was willing to become incident commander on this disaster. Piston Peak's Air Attack team could finally find rest…or at least as much rest as a team with a ground crew on the front line of the fire and an aircraft that had gone down in the forest could find.

* * *

"…and when the smokejumpers discovered that Dipper is actually about a decade older than Cabbie…" Blade Ranger was rattling off any story he could think to tell when his radio crackled to life. For a few brief moments he hoped that is was Dusty, but then he realized that the call was coming in the interoperability channel instead of the Piston Peak Air Attack one.

" _Helicopter on station, helicopter on station. This is CAP Two Eight Hotel. Please Respond, Over."_

"This is Chief Tree Zero One. Over."

" _Chief Tree Zero One it is a pleasure to meet you, though I wish it would have been under different circumstances."_ The plane sounded genuinely saddened. _"I will be acting your spotter plane for the next 6 to 8 hours."_

"Where are you currently located? Over." Blade searched the skies trying to locate the running lights of a small plane.

" _I am sitting about fifteen hundred feet above your position. Over_." The plane wiggled its wings in the attempt to be a little more visible. It worked and Blade's eyes started to track the plane across the sky.

"Alright, I see you."

" _And I see you."_ The plane gave a soft chuckle, before her voice turning deadly serious. _"I am currently looking down at one helo and if I squint I can see the small aircraft in the trees. I have been told that he is one of yours. A SEAT? Over."_

"A trainee SEAT." Blade allowed some of his exhaustion to seep into his voice.

" _Float plane?"_

"Pontoons."

" _Good."_ The search plane said with an usual level of confidence.

"Good what?"

" _A torn off pontoon would explain the large piece of wreckage I am spotting about 25 yards from the main crash site."_

"What about the rest of him?" Blade was grateful to get additional information, but Attack Chief couldn't help wondering if he was ready to hear that he was standing watch over a corpse.

" _Everything else looks fairly intact, but I really hope your SEAT is out cold, because that doesn't look like a very comfortable position to be in."_

"Can you give me some more details?" The gears in Blades mind were already spinning up. If Dusty was in a relatively large piece there was a chance that he was still alive.

" _Well currently 'Dusty' is hanging upside down and held at least a good 15 feet off of the ground in a couple of trees."_ The plane above looked as though it was pulling a tight spiral in order to get a better look at the wreckage. _"I suspect that the trees are the reason that your SEAT is remarkably intact. It looks like their branches ate his speed, but he somehow managed to fly through a forest without smacking head long into a trunk. Very lucky."_

"With everything that has gone wrong over the last 24 hours, I think we were owed a miracle." Though, Blade thought, there was still a whole lot of time for things to go wrong.

" _We will be expecting a team of 3 night capable helitankers that will set up a retardant line in 30 minutes. One of them is bucket capable and be standing by to put out any sparks that get too close."_ The CAP plane remarked after an awkward pause. _"If you would like I could come low and take some recon photos. They would not get to your base until midmorning tomorrow, but they are better than nothing."_

"Any photos you can give us will help us plan the rescue mission."

" _Understood. Dropping to 500 feet."_ As the small plane spoke, Blade could hear it dropping altitude. With practiced grace it flew a box around the crash site. Each side of the box was oriented with the cardinal directions; each corner was a tight loop that realigned the plane with the correct heading. Once the box was completed, the little plane made a flyby of Blades rock. Waggling its wings in greeting as they slowly soared upward. _"Returning to 15,000 AGL. Is there anything else I am going to do for you while I am on station?"_

To start with Blade couldn't think of anything, then an idea popped into his head. "Do you know any good stories? I figured it Dusty is awake and unable to communicate we can at least keep him company. If he is out then it will at least keep me awake."

" _I think I may be able to come up with a few_ …" The plane paused for a long moment, then started speaking again _. "Okay, got one. When I first got started doing search and rescue we got called up to look for a truck. A bright orange geology one who had gone out to collect sample that was over due by two days…"_

* * *

Maru closed his eye against harsh florescent lights of tower for a moment and the next thing he knew Patch was giving him a gentle but firm whack on his canopy.

"Maru."

"I wasn't sleepin'." The Mechanic muttered as he blinked sleep from his eyes.

"I didn't say you were." Patch said evenly as she updated something in the emergency response data base.

"What do you need?" Maru yawned, grabbing for his coffee mug. The liquid in it was cold and tasted funny, but it at least got his pistons firing.

"I need you to go hit your hanger."

"I am fine." Maru tried to argue as he took another gulp of the cold, terrible coffee.

"Maru, you practically had to rebuild the Chiefs hydraulics this afternoon." Patch smirked. "And I know you are exhausted because you are currently drinking from my coffee mug and didn't even comment about the hazelnut creamer."

Well that explained the strange taste, Maru stared down at the mug and sure enough it had Patch's name written on it in black sharpie. The coffee was also a milky color instead of the black a proper cup of coffee should be. The realization kind of made Maru want to go brush his teeth, but he couldn't admit defeat now. "Well maybe I decided to give the creamer a second try."

Patch snorted. "And I am the Queen of Sheba. Go get some sleep. The Highbird said to expect some photos of Dusty's crash site about seven this morning and before you ask it looks like he is pretty intact. I need you rested and back here to start rescue planning."

"Sounds like a plan." Maru set down Patch's coffee mug but didn't budge a wheel.

"Do I need to push you off the tower to get you moving?" Patch smirked.

"I am going, I am going. Don't get your timing belt in a knot." Maru barely made it back to his hanger before his eyes slipped closed. While the old forklift was perfectly capable of staying awake for days when the siltation required it, his body also knew when grab a few hours of shut eye.

* * *

"… _it turned out that the poor vehicle had gotten itself trapped behind a pretty significant rockslide and had required an extra four days to find an alternative way out of the campground and I ended up spotting him fueling up at the local gas station as they were coming back into town…"_ CAP Two Eight Hotel pleasant voice rambled on about their first successful mission. Then they paused and banked sharply towards the North. When they spoke again you could practically hear the plane smile. _"Do you hear that?"_

Blade perked up his ears and heard a familiar thrum of helicopter routers. Then the three helicopters crested the hill in an explosion of light. The Civil Air Patrol plane above him rapidly took control of the situation and directing the helicopter to paint a triangle of retardant around Dusty. Once their buckets were empty the little aircraft then directed the choppers to a location on the river open enough for them to safely scoop and then sent the night firefighting craft across the forest to put out sparks.

It was almost like watching a tightly choreographed dance. The three helicopters were the performers and the voice of the spotter plane was the music. On the cliff overlooking the crash site, all Blade could do was sit back and enjoy the show.

* * *

Dipper's eyes were red and swollen. Windlifter suspected that it wasn't just because of the smoke. The seaplane was clearly upset about the entire situation that their team had gotten themselves into. There was no reason for Dipper to worry herself sick. Dusty was either going to be okay or he was probably already dead, and there was nothing that she could possibly do to make things better right now.

"Get some sleep." Windlifter said gently brushing Dipper with his blades. Then the big helicopter settled on his wheels and closed his eyes. "We take off at dawn."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello everyone, I know that this particular chapter was kind of a transitional one. We are working on getting all the players in place for Dusty's rescue but I promise that there will be some Cabbie, Smokejumper, Windlifter, and Maru goodness to keep as busy as the pieces fall into place. Those pieces are going the be the focus of today's Aerospace notes.
> 
> When it comes to emergency services aircraft they tend to work on very specialized teams. We get to see a lot of an Air Attack Team whose job it is to nip wildfires in the bud in the movie, but in order to get Dusty out of the trees they are going to have to lean on some other air crews. One of those groups is the CAP (Civil Air Patrol) planes. These aircraft specialize in emergency communication, aerial photography, and finding downed aircraft. They are also occasionally used to circle a downed aircraft or other target to help facilitate rescues. While CAP aircraft are heavily used in a lot of different disaster scenarios they are often purely in a supportive role so you don't really see them in the news.
> 
> Night helitaks, on the other hand, are a pretty showy group. These helicopters are mounted with bright search beams that allow them to operate in conditions that ground all other aircraft. Most of these aircraft transport water via bucket so their range and utility is limited, but if you have a relatively small target that you are trying to protect from a fire the night helitak team can keep the flames at bay until additional support can arrive.
> 
> The last group I would like to bring up is the Super Tanker. Super Tankers are massive birds that can put down retardant lines that are up to three miles long and a football field wide. Super Tankers are usually not used to put out spot fires but have been found to be incredibly valuable for herding larger fires away from sensitive structures or even whole communities. They have been used to provide buffer zones for evacuation roots. These are awesome birds, but you have to be careful working with them. Their retardant stream is heavy enough that it could not only knock any plane that flew through it to the ground but it has also been known knock down trees and even to damage ground vehicles its spray path.
> 
> Again, thank you so much for reading. I hope that you will stay tune for the next installment. Also, if you have a moment drop me a line or a review. I would really love to get your feedback on the story thus far, as well as, info on the aerospace stuff you would like to learn more a


	4. The Morning Breaks

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mutual aid has finally started to arrive, but that doesn't mean that Dusty, Blade, and Cabbie are out of danger yet.

 The population of the Piston Flats Airstrip had swelled during the night as mutual aid started to arrive.  There was of course the big Quint leading his team of wildfire apparatus from the county, but there was also a small fleet of tanker planes from Cal Fire, and right around dawn a dozer crew from Joshua Tree National Park rumbled in.

When Windlifter got moving for the morning, he was incredibly pleased to note that the rehab apparatuses from various units had already set up a hospitality center. It looked like they had roped in one of the water tenders to start filling the big coffee urns with water, which meant the comfortable bitter scent of firehouse coffee would soon be wafting across the camp heralding the switch from night crew to day.

Knowing that it was going to take at least another 15 minutes before the Helo could get a proper cup of Joe, Windlifter decided to visit the first aid station and check up on Cabbie. The Piston Peak Air Attack Team’s jump plane eyes were squeezed shut with pain as Windlifter rolled up, but when you considered that he had a fork lift halfway inside his port engine the pain was somewhat to be expected.

The Sky Crane was about to make a comment about possibly increasing Cabbie’s pain medication to the medic, but he was already out of the engine and lowering the scissor lift towards the ground. The young looking vehicle had the white and red livery of a Red Cross relief worker.

“We have your filters in stock.” The forklift said eyeing Windlifters engines. He set down the piece of Cabbie’s engine that he had been fiddling on a tarp and started heading down the tarmac. “Let’s get your old ones out.”

“Cabbie will you be alright waiting?” The sky crane asked, not wanting to interrupt the injured craft’s repair.

The cargo plane snorted. “I am going to have to be. C-119 intake and oil cooling vent filters are not exactly things that everyone keeps on hand. I am going to be grounded until my parts get here.”

Windlifter nodded.  It made sense, C-119’s were no longer common aircraft on the fire flight line, in fact Cabbie was the very last of the make to work on an Air Attack Team, so it would be a waste of space for them waste the space on parts for a rare aircraft when they could use it instead for emergency supplies for aircraft they knew they were going to see on the flight line. Still it didn’t seem right to get his filters swapped while Cabbie was left in a holding pattern.

“I decline.”

“What?” The Red Cross forklift actually gave Windlifter a double take.

“I decline the filter change.” The Skycrane gave his rotors a lazy spin. “I suspect that I will be heading back to my home base this afternoon and would prefer to have a known mechanic complete the task.”

“What if you get sent to man the line somewhere else?”

“Then I will reevaluate the situation then.” Windlifter said with finality, then nodded towards the Attack Team’s Jump plane. “For now, I will not take your attention away from Cabbie’s engine repair work. With as bad as this fire has gotten, I suspect we are going to need him back in the air sooner rather than later.”

The Skycrane didn’t give the forklift a chance to respond. Instead he followed the smell of coffee to the hospitality center. He was able to convince the white and red logistics van to give him two tall, Styrofoam cups of the dark, oil brew. Then he set off to find his still sleeping crewmate.

“Dipper.” He nudged a mug of coffee in Dipper’s direction as the bush plane blinked some of the exhaustion from her eyes. “Dipper, it is time to attend this morning’s safety briefing.”

* * *

 The night helitankers had left about an hour ago, leaving the Blade alone to keep vigil over Dusty’s crash site. Well not completely alone. Every once in a while Blade could catch a glimpse of the dark blue belly of the CAP plane circling above him, but she had been getting pretty quiet up there. Blade didn’t blame her, 7 hours was a long time to fly in circles.

 _“Do you hear that?”_ CAP Two Eight Hotel voice interrupted Blade’s thoughts. The Attack Chief closed his eyes and tried to hear what the search craft was listening too. Faintly on the edge of his senses he heard a familiar high pitched scream.

“Jet?”

 _“I think the Super Tanker has arrived. Give me a moment.”_ Blade could swear that he could hear the fix wing above him grinning. _“This location has been prioritized as a drop zone. You are requested to remain on the ground with your rotors are secured, it is about to get pretty windy. I have been requested to fly to Piston Peak Air Attack Base and land. Once the drops are complete then CAP One Niner Foxtrot will take up position as spotter.”_

“Copy that, Two Eight Hotel.” Blade looked upward to see the Cessna above him peel off and head home. “Fair skies.”

_“Fair skies to you, I hope the next time we meet will be under better circumstances. CAP Two Eight Hotel, Out.”_

Blade then held his breath and waited for the Very Large Air Tanker, known as a VLAT to arrive. He did not need to wait long. The scream of 4 jet engines echoed across the park as the 747 Supertanker made her approach at a little over 2,000 feet AGL. Even though Blade had only worked one fire with one of these behemoths, he knew that she was only scouting her route. That her next pass was going to be a whole lot closer to the ground.

Moments later she was back. Flaps fully extended and engines dialed giving her just above stall speed (which was admittedly still really bloody fast), the Evergreen Supertanker barreled through the sky under 1000 feet above the earth surface. When she reached the north end of this small protected forest, the VLAT began the drop.

Blade had a lot of time working with big tankers. The Air Attack base had once had an Orion and it wasn’t uncommon for them to work closely with CALfire, County, BLM, or even other National Park tanker planes during bad fire seasons. The 747 put those smaller aircraft to shame. In less than 15 minutes she had put down as much retardant as Windlifter, Piston Peak’s current heaviest lifter, could apply in 10 trips.

Then as quickly as the VLAT had arrived she was gone, probably heading to the closes airport with a runway capable of holding her weight. With the forest in front of Blade now painted red with retardant, the chances of Dusty burning to death were now significantly reduced. Now Blade could focus on the much bigger problem…how in the world where they going to get Dusty out of a tree in the middle of the forest?

* * *

The CAP Cessna must have been really tired, really nervous, or some combination of the two because she did the bounce on landing. She then rolled her way along the tarmac, before stopping under the tower with a big yawn. Tired then, Maru guessed that was to be expected. The way this fire had blown up, it probably had caused half the emergency crews in Northern California to lose sleep last night. The mechanic couldn’t do anything to treat the little planes exhaustion, but there was something else he could do. 

“You hungry?”

“Starving…” CAP Two Eight Hotel started without thinking, then she gave an apologetic squeak. “But I can wait until I get back to base. I don’t want to be a bother.”

“Listen sweetheart. It is going to take me a couple of minutes to get all of these photos loaded onto the computer. The least I can do is make sure that you have something in your fuel tanks to tie you over.”

“Thanks.” She ducked her gaze.

“I am assuming that you are an AVGas type of girl?” Maru asked, and the Cessna nodded.

“Yes, sir.”

Maru leaded the little Cessna over to the fuel pumps and gave her a good half a tank, which the mechanic was pretty sure no one was going to miss because Cabbie would burn through that many gallons of petrol in ten minutes flat. Then he had the CAP plane pop her view port. Pulling out the camera and Maru headed to computer in the main hanger.

 “Well, let’s look at what you have for us.”

* * *

 The sun was trying, and failing, to peek through the thick smoke that covered the valley floor, but at this point Dynamite really didn’t really care. Every single member of her motley crew was exhausted, dehydrated, and feeling the pain of blistered paint, but thankfully no one was complaining. Not that she would have expected Pinecone, Drip, Blackout, or Avalanche to murmur. She trusted the fellow Smokejumpers with her life, but she hadn’t been nearly as sure about the various other members of staff that Old Jammer had managed to enlist in the effort to keep the National Park’s last escape path clear.

With the park’s only structural fire engine out of commission and ordered to the relief station to get repairs, Dynamite had to get a bit creative. Every piece of construction equipment Dynamite could get her hands on was dragged into clearing vegetation and the occasional rockslide from around the road. When the flames got a little bit to close they had used the nozzles on the road water tankers to wet things down and they had even lit a couple of back fires to burn the fuel away from the tourists.

In a way it was a comfort to have some sections of the road burn over, yes it was scary as Honda to experience but Dynamite could stop worrying about anything that was already in the black. If only she could stop worrying about the tourists. As far as anyone could tell there were at least 150 vehicles still in the park.  30 of those, were staff such as Patch, Maru, and the Smokejumpers. The rest were tourists, and no one knew for sure if their count was accurate or a vast underestimation.

Dynamite and Rake, the fire forklift from the lodge, had just finished getting a donut on a highly panicking member of the public when Dynamite felt the tale-tell rumble of heavy equipment heading up the road. She wasn’t disappointed when a bright red interface engine came around the bend.

“Who’s boss?” The clearly experienced apparatus scanned the ash streaked vehicles in search for some sort of rank markings. 

“I am.” Dynamite rolled up and leveled a hard gaze up ward as though to dare the specialized fire engine to make a joke about her size. He didn’t, instead the engine simply nodded.

“I have brought you some more tires.” At the interface engine’s words several grass wagons, pumper engines, water tenders, and even a pair of browsers peeked from behind the interface engine. “That said, we are kind of hoping that we can swap personal with you. We could really use some heavy lifters for our assigned mission.”

“Which is?”

“Clearing a path to the fuel storage tanks near the Fusel Lodge. Apparently all nine of them caught fire last night and are still burning. We have a specialized fuel fire team standing by but most of the hazmat and gas burn vehicles were never designed for bush fires so we need to clear them a path.” The engine’s problem made sense, and if the fuel tank fire was a bad as he seemed to indicate time was of the essence. Having a few vehicles who knew the park as well as the back of their windshield wipers could help prevent catastrophe.

“Rake, Pinecone, think you are ready to take charge?” Both vehicles gave the affirmative. “Good, cause your job is to keep this evacuation path clear. Avalanche, Drip, and Blackout, you are with me.”

The Smokejumpers were heading to face the inferno head on.

* * *

 _"Blade…Blade I know you can hear me.”_ The voice was familiar, but still felt far away. Blade tried to allow himself to drift back to sleep. _“Chrysler Blade, answer your slagging com channel!”_

Blade’s eyes snapped open. “Maru?”

 _“Who else?”_ Annoyance was thick in the mechanic’s voice.

“What do you want?” Blade yawned. He hadn’t realized that he had dozed off, but his body was telling him that the few minutes of shut eye he had managed to catch wasn’t nearly enough.

_“I want to know why you didn’t mention that you were leaking?”_

“I am not leaking.” Blade tried to keep his voice neutral, while trying to figure out how in the world the mechanic had been able to determine that Blade a had a slow leak in one of his fuel lines. 

 _“And the next thing you are going to tell me is that you are seeping instead.”_ Maru was livid.

“I will be back as soon as we figure out a way to get Dusty detangled from the trees.”

 _“If you continue to do this, I am going to be forced to ground you.”_ Apparently Maru had decided that Blade wasn’t going to take his personal health seriously, perhaps the mechanic could threaten the Attack chief into submission. Well, two could play at that game.

“Fine by me. Ground me where I am.”

 _“Helicopters!”_ Maru spat as though it was the worst swear word he could think of. Then the line went dead…which terrified Blade more that he would like to admit. As long as Maru was talking you knew you were safe, when he went quite it was time to panic. Blade had a feeling that he was going to be in a whole slag of trouble when he got back to base.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes, I know I have been a very bad person about posting chapters. I am going to work on getting the rest of this story posted this weekend. Until then here is a quick Aerospace note to keep you entertained. 
> 
> When you think of fire apparatus you tend to think of trucks and engines, but it is rare to see an actual fire truck fighting wild fires as those types tend to prefer to keep their wheels firmly on the pavement. Instead the question you should be asking is, is it an engine, a tender, or something more specialized. Here are a few quick rules of thumb to help you out.
> 
> If it is carrying water for another vehicle or it is designed to put out fires at an airport you are looking at a tender. These vehicles are designed to get water, retardant, and other fluids to the fire. Many tenders don't mind going off road, but the largest tankers tend to roll over if you take them off a graded track. Ryker is a great example of an airport crash tender.
> 
> If it isn't at an airport and it is actively pumping water onto a fire, then you are probably looking at an engine. Engines are vehicles that have the ability to pump water either from a small internal tank, an external water source such as a lake, or a tender. What sets a wildfire engine apart from their city brother is the fact that they can pump water while moving. That special skill is know as pump and go. Pulaski would be a great example of an engine. Given Pulaksi's hybrid wildland and city firefighting characteristics he is probably an example of an interface engine, which are designed to protect structures in wildfire prone areas.
> 
> If it carries a large latter, then you can call it a truck. Red can be called a truck or an engine because he is a special vehicle called a Quint. Quints are hybrid truck/engines.
> 
> If it is working a fire and isn't one of the three types of vehicles described above it probably has a specialized job on the fire line. Whether it is the Rehab units who are in charge of keeping the firefighters healthy, a squad transporting personal, or a hazmat dealing with dangerous chemicals, you can never go wrong calling any of these vehicles an apparatus. Oh, and all else fails, when you are in doubt you are never wrong when you call a truck, tender, or engine a fire apparatus either.
> 
> Well, I hoped that helped you figure out what time of fire apparatus just rolled by. If you have any questions about this or any other aspect of wildland firefighting that you would like me to take on in future installments please drop me a message or review.


	5. Change of Winds

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A change in weather threatens to make the firefighter's jobs more dangerous, and Blade gets a tongue lashing when Maru makes a field call.

 Maru was pretty much ready to tear Blade apart one piece at a time. For being such a stickler about making sure that his team was healthy the Chief was remarkably good at ignoring his own health. This fact was proven by the way Blade was being so nonplussed about the smug of fluid that was currently spreading underneath him.

The mechanic on the other hand was starting to go into panic mode. While the CAP Cessna had done an exceptionally good job of capturing imagines of Dusty’s frame, she hadn’t actually gotten any direct imagines of Blade. As a result, Maru didn’t have enough information to identify exactly what type of fluid Blade was losing.  

Next to Maru, Patch was also staring at a computer screen with a look of murder in her eyes. But her beef was with the Doppler images dancing across the screen. After a long moment she slammed down her coffee mug and huffed.

“It is officially, we are totally screwed.”

“What is it this time?” Maru glanced up from his screen.

Patch motioned out the tower’s windows towards the smoke filled sky. “You know that cold front that was supposed to go north and leave us alone?”

“Yep.”

“Well turns out Mother Nature missed the memo.” Patch spat as though her favorite sports team had just lost to the Chicago Cubs.

“Anything we can do about it?”

“Not unless Windlifter has been keeping some rain magic from us.”

“Then stop stressing about it. There are some solid weather planes working the fire, they will do their best to keep everyone working the line safe.” Maru pushed away from his screen and grabbed for Patch’s mug. If the dispatcher was getting this punchy, she was probably running low of caffeine. The lack of sloshing when he picked the mug up supported his hypothesis. He rolled over to the small coffee pot they kept in the tower for these types of occasions and started to brew a new pot. “As for the winds spreading the embers, it is not like we have even come close containing this fire so what is the difference?”

“The difference might be someone’s home.”

“Risk of living in paradise I guess.” Maru shrugged as he listened to the pot bubble. 

“I am just glad that we are going to be getting Windlifter and Dipper back on base.” Patch yawned unhappily. “I am getting sick of worrying about the entire team.”

* * *

 

The Piston Peak Attack Team Smokejumpers had faced a whole lot of terrifying fire phenomenon in the past, but Dynamite was pretty sure that the burning tanks in front of them officially took the cake. Even Drip was completely still as they watched the flames boil hundreds of feet upward into the sky. The smokejumpers were not given much time to stare though. There was a job to be done and road way to be cleared.

“Never seen a fuel fire before?” One of the Cal Fire water tenders gave a low chuckle.

“NOT ONE LIKE THAT!” Avalanche exclaimed with a mixture of awe and fascination.

“How do you fight something like that?” Blackout asked wide eyed.

“We don’t.” The big interface engine in the lead called over his shoulder. “Fuel fires are dangerous beasts. We clear a path and then support the apparatus who are equipped to contain the problem. If they get overwhelmed we sit back and wait for the problem to burn itself out.” 

Watching the tower of roaring flames leaping over a hundred feet into the air, the whole Jump team couldn’t help but wonder just how insane an apparatus had to be to pick tank fires as their specialty.

* * *

 

Maru was once again reminded just how completely useless Dipper in these types of situations. Yes she was a solid teammate and you could always trust here to follow orders, though she might argue with you about it for a bit. What the old girl lacked was creativity. Once she had stubbornly taken on a world view, no amount of discussion would make her change her mind. Not that Maru hadn’t tried…repeatedly in the past…but he just didn’t have time to test Dipper’s cogitative boundaries right now. 

Windlifter, on the other hand, was an incredibly comforting presence. The big helicopter had an eye for nonconventional approaches which was exactly what Maru needed help with at the moment. So as soon as the two Air Attack Team members landed, Maru had sent Dipper to grab a nap while he had Windlifter join him in the main hanger.

“So what do you think?”

“I will be unable to retrieve him from the air.” Windlifter said without even a hint of emotion.

“That is what I thought. Those trees are just too dense to risk an air rescue and Dusty really did get himself hung up in there. So, it looks like the park is going to get a new access road.” The mechanic verbalized what he had suspected when he had first looked at the aerial photos of the crash site. He then tapped the screen drawing attention to his other problem. “What about Blade?”

“If the Chief will not return to base to be repaired, the only solution would be to have his mechanic go to him.” After years of knowing the Skycrane, Maru could swear that a little bit of amusement actually snuck into Windlifter’s voice.

Maru opened his mouth to argue. Then closed it when he thought better of it. Windlifter was completely right, the only way that the mechanic was going to be able to make sure that Blade didn’t bleed out from a slow leak was to go and repair the leak himself. He glared unhappily at the Skycrane. “You know what Windy, I really hate when you are right.” 

* * *

The aid station got busier as the morning went on, leaving Cabbie to get pushed farther and farther into the background. Not that the C-119 really minded, between his battle and firefighting experience he knew exactly why he was at the bottom of the triage list. The cargo plane just wished that Red Cross mechanics would have put the cowling back on his engines and at least put few pieces of cloth over the vents of his unprotected intake system because the ashy dust was really starting to get uncomfortable.

As the morning progressed Cabbie managed to spot a few familiar faces in the stream of tourists who had run out of coolant or popped a tire. There was the big yellow structural apparatus from the lodge, who apparently took some damage during the evacuation. There were some pretty significant dings and his canopy nozzle looked as though it needed to be replaced, but he was deemed to be road worthy and sent down the mountain for repairs.

Cabbie also picked out the face of several park staff from other departments. They were all breathing rough and blackened with soot, but were surprisingly intact given the intensity of the fire and just how Dodge exposed they had been. The old plane had only spotted one vehicle that he was really worried about.

Apparently part of the road team had been caught in a burnover while evacuating one of the outlying campsites. The crew of construction equipment had ushered the panicked group of visitors into a tunnel, and Odus, one of the big track loaders, had literally blocked the entrance with his aft side. The warping of the metal was bad enough that the loader had barely made it to Piston Flats on his own power and the mechanics had made the decision to medievac him to San Francisco by air.

Gradually a few other vehicles were added to the not a quick fix, but no critical patient pile. There was grass wagon with breaking issues and a pumper with an electrical short that shut off pressure every time she was bumped, napping in the hazy sunlight.  A small aircraft with a Wankel engine that no one really knew what to do with was soon tucked under Cabbie’s port wing. The little guy was a talkative little fellow until someone arranged a tow plane to pick him up that afternoon. As the day continued to drag on, Cabbie decided that the two damaged fire apparatus probably had the right idea, and the big plane tried to nap away the wait. 

* * *

The fuel fire was even more frightening close up. Even though they were working over 1000 yards away from the flames, the Air Attack team could feel the heat on their skins. The paint was literally starting to pucker on the engines who were applying foam closes to roaring tanks.

Though none of the smokejumpers would ever verbally admit it, they were kind of relieved that they had been assigned to help clear debris that had once been ranger housing before the firestorm had swept through the area. The hope was that if they kept digging they would eventually be able to find a working fire hydrant. So far they hadn’t had much luck. Both hydrants they had uncovered had negligible pressure.

They had managed to locate a basement, but not in the way that Dynamite would have preferred. Drip had fallen through a set of half carbonized floorboards and it had taken the whole team just over an hour to dig him out. Even now everyone else on the team suspected that the little loader was hurting a whole lot more that he was letting on. Dynamite was about to head back to the main line to find out if there was Rehab Unit available to do some first aid, but the interface engine in command rolled off the line to meet them.

“Can your kid get out on his own power?” The commander looked at Drip with measured concern.

“Yes, why?” Dynamite pressed.

“We got a strong band of thunderstorms coming through.” The engine looked towards the sky with worry in his eyes.

“Wet or dry?” The Air Attack Lead asked knowing the difference between the two was huge. Both were dangerous but a good line of wet thunderstorms offered the hope of relief.

“Above my pay grade.” The big apparatus shrugged. “All they are telling me is that they think it is going to be bad enough that they are grounding all aircraft.”

“What do you need us to do?”

“Take the _‘Civilian’_ ” the engine gave a sharp nod toward where Cad was cowering behind one of the CalFire big tankers, “and get the heck out of Dodge.”

“What are you guy’s going to do?”

“We are going to hold the line.” The interface glanced towards the line of tankers, tenders, and engines trying to get the fuel fire under control with pride.

“Understood. Be safe.” Dynamite locked eyes with interface engine in command before turning her attention to her team. “Well you heard him boys, Time to fall back.” 

Dynamite squared her tires and started moving. Things on the fire line were going to get hairy as the high winds of the weather front came through. As much as she didn’t want to abandon her fellow fire apparatus in the face of danger, she also took her orders seriously. Dynamite was going to evacuate Cad to safety even if it required welding a tow hook to his fender and throwing him behind Avalanche.

* * *

 

Maru’s mission to go and rescue Blade from his own stupidity was going to have to wait until at least the morning. The strengthening line of storms was starting to darken the afternoon sky and the Incident Commander had issued orders that all aircraft in the fire zone were to be grounded. There were just too many possible risks to life. 

With nothing any of them could do while the storm raged on, Maru decided to order everyone to bed early. While the mechanic suspected that no one was going to get much sleep, some sleep was going to be an improvement on the amount of rest that the team had gotten the previous night.

* * *

 

A storm was on its way. Cabbie could taste the ozone and feel his frame settle as barometric pressure dropped. The old plane’s radios sang with the Pan, Pan, Pan, reports about bad weather and the IC orders to get all the aircraft on the ground. It was that order that was causing the traffic jam at the Piston Flats Airstrip.

The many of the ground vehicles didn’t really seem like they knew what they were doing as tower staggered aircraft landings between the two runways. It had gotten bad enough that the strip’s fire tender was out there chancing vehicles who didn’t have any business on the tarmac into the big hanger that was being used to shelter the logistics and administration teams.

The airport’s two other hangers were too full to take on any lookiloos. It didn’t take that many of the larger wildland fire apperatus to fill up the makeshift mechanic’s bay. And, sadly, Cabbie was also not going to find shelter in the hanger used to shelter SEATs, spotters, and other aircraft that were too small to take high winds. That left Cabbie with only one option. Weather the storm outside like all of the other big planes. Cabbie would grin and bear it, but the was one thing he really needed done before the rains hit.

“Excuse me, but one of your mechanics took apart both of my engines and they are kind of exposed to the weather.” Cabbie informed the first mechanic that he could convince to stop from his frantic gathering of tools and actually talk to him. “Is there anything you can do?”

Perhaps the C119 should have chosen his words a bit better, because the Red Cross tugs had simply thrown a pair of tarps over his wings, loosely tied them in place, and then tucked themselves into one of the commandeered hangers. Well, this is going to be a very fun night, Cabbie sighed to himself as the first raindrops hit his skin.

* * *

The calm before the storm had passed, and now Blade was feeling incredibly exposed. Even though he had moved from his rocky perch to a ledge where he wasn’t one of the highest points on the landscape, and thus he was not a flying lightning rod, the wind still buffeted his rotors. The helicopter was starting to miss the constant companionship of the CAP spotter planes.

The constant chatter of aircraft of the radio had almost made the agonizing wait bearable. No the air frequencies were quiet, and without the highbird in place Blade couldn’t even call the base and taunt Maru into an argument to help keep him away. 

Then clouds opened and the rain poured down.

* * *

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, while this past chapter doesn't have a whole lot of radio communication in it, I have gotten a couple of questions about the pronunciation used in some of the radio conversations. If those types of questions managed to filter all the way to me, there are probably a whole lot more people who are scratching their heads about what I wrote and didn't ask a question. So, today we are having a short lesson on emergency services radio communication.
> 
> The first thing you need to know is how to spell and count over the radio. The phonetic alphabet used for aviation and emergency services is as following: Alpha, Bravo, Charlie, Delta, Echo, Foxtrot, Golf, Hotel, India, Juliet, Kilo, Lima, Mike, November, Oscar, Pap, Quebec, Romeo, Sierra, Tango, Uniform, Victor, Whiskey, X-Ray, Yankee, and Zulu. You pronounce numbers over the radio as following: Wun, Too, Tree, Fo-wer, Fife, Six, Seven, Ate, Niner, Zero.
> 
> Next you need to know a couple of prowords. Prowords are special words or short phrases with exact meanings that are used to help clarify communication. Here are a few prowords that you would expect to see at Piston Peak. Roger=Your last transmission was received OK. Wilco=Roger and I will comply with your instructions. Over= I am done talking, go ahead. Out=I am done with our conversation, bye. Affirmative=Yes. Say Again= say it again, often used when part of the transmission was garbled or the other person mumbled. Read Back=read back what I just told you, used to make sure a list of numbers or tasks was heard by the aircraft or ground crew correctly. Correction= Oops! I did not really mean to say that.
> 
> Well I hoped you enjoyed this little lesson on terminology over the radio. See you next chapter.


	6. Shivering Against The Storm

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A storm is raging across Piston Peaks, and many members at trapped outside in the elements feeling it's fury.

On third night of what the media insisted on dubbing ‘The Great Piston Peak Fire’ the weather finally started to work in their favor. A series of cold fronts came through bringing a line of thunderstorms. While the high winds and lightning had grounded all the Air Attack teams and forced several of the ground teams to fall back, it had also brought a deep soaking rain that was beginning to slow the fire’s progress significantly.

Still, at the moment Cabbie couldn’t help but loath Mother Nature for sending this storm their way. He was currently trapped on the shoulder of the tarmac between planning section headquarters and the Red Cross Headquarters seemingly forgotten unless they needed to use him for equipment storage. The chocks on his wheels where preventing him from turning either his tale or his nose into the wind. The tarps had been thrown over the leading edge of his wings was doing little to keep the water out of his exposed engine parts. The feeling made him desperately crave his dry cozy hanger.

It wasn’t like the C-119 wasn’t use to sleeping outside. Hanger space was a low priority during war time, and what space there was usually reserved for the fighter planes. Cargo and bombers slept outside regardless of the weather. In Korea there had even been nights when they great planes had had to keep their engines running during the long dark to keep their engines from freezing and their oil from turning solid. He had lost friends a few of those nights. But even when things got really bad, there was always someone right next to going through the exact same thing.

Okay, technically Caddie wasn’t the only one stuck out in the storm at this airport. There was no shelter for any of the big planes. A small fleet of C-130s and P3 Orions were huddling together on the far side of the tarmac, but they were sheltering in each other wings and taking turns blocking the wind with their fuselages.  Cabbie looked at his fellow heavies with a bit of jealous. If he wasn’t chocked in place he knew that he would he would have take shelter from the storm by staying in the middle of the group.

By about 2 am in the morning, Cabbie had determined that he wasn’t going to get more than a few minutes of sleep, and resigned himself the discomfort of sucking rain without out the protection of intake filters. Maru was going to have a field day with his engines when he got home, but it was best not to dwell on that right now.

Cabbie was trying to focus on exactly what he was going to say in his TMST reports when he heard crunch of tarmac beneath tire and track. He blinked the rain from his eyes to see five sets of exhausted eyes looking up at him. Well, it looked like the Piston Peak’s Smokejumper team had finally been pulled from the fire line.

The little, at least from Cabbie’s perspective, earth movers were a mess. Their paint was streaked with ashes and mud. There were little blistered pockmarks on their bumpers indicating their proximity to embers and Drip was moving oddly, like something was caught in his undercarriage and rubbing uncomfortably.

“You do know that you can probably find a place to sleep in one of the buildings, right?” Cabbie nodded hoarsely towards one of the hangers that had been claimed by the smaller vehicles as a rest station. His little smokejumpers just looked up at him with tired eyes and shrugged.

Avalanche leveled a look which said, of course we do, but where would that leave you? The dozer then settled on the snuggly against Cabbies fuselage on the wind side of his body. The old plane tried to protest, but Avalanche had already turned off his running lights and was allowing his engine to whine down. Cabbie wouldn’t be surprised if the kid was already half asleep, and long experience had told him that you didn’t wake Avalanche up when he was dreaming unless you wanted to wake the rest of the base up with him.

The other four jumpers at least had the common sense to park themselves on the leeward side of the aircraft. Dynamite was nestled directly against the old bird’s skin. Her engine was warm and purred gently as she waited for Drip, Blackout, and Pinecone to resecure the tarps that had been draped over Cabbies wings. 

Once they were tied back in place and Cabbie had stop breathing in so much rain water, the little dirt beasts had crawled under the great wings of the injured cargo plane and fell promptly asleep. Comforted by the residual heat of the jump team’s engines and the knowledge that his team was safely sheltered beneath him Cabbie soon joined the jumpers in dreams.

* * *

 

 

On the other side of the park Blade sneezed…which knocked off all of the water that had collected on his blades. The big helicopter sighed. He knew that a night on the rocks was not going to hurt him, but it still didn’t mean that he would not have preferred to be safely tucked on his sleeping mat. That said, even if Dusty had made it back to the base safely, Blade doubted if he would have been able to sleep through this storm. Not while the ground team was still facing down the blaze and Cabbie was grounded at the Piston Flats. Blade by nature was a worrier, and that was one of the reasons he had been chosen for command.

Blade blinked the rain from his eyes, and tried to will himself for a nap. Even a few minutes of sleep would provide a few moment of rest bit from his discomfort. The helicopter almost managed to doze, when he heard a sound. A painfully haunting sound that was faintly carried on the winds. Dusty was crying out.

On some level hearing the little SEAT’s panicked calls was a welcome relief because it meant that Dusty was still alive down there.  On the other hand, the sound felt like it was tearing the helicopter apart. A member of his team was hurting, and there was absolutely nothing that Blade could do to help him. 

Not knowing what else to do, Blade once again started to tell stories. Happy stores that had taken place under the bright California sunshine. He had no clue if Dusty could hear him and the helicopter was pretty sure that Dusty was the only aircraft anywhere close enough to hear him speaking on the radio. Eventually Dusty’s cries quieted to a whimper that was drowned out by the howl of the wind, the echo of thunder, and the pounding of the relentless rain. Still, Blade spoke to the dark, hoping that on some level he was able to provide a lifeline to his downed teammate.

* * *

 

 

At the Piston Peak Air Attack Base Maru couldn’t catch a wink of sleep. The mechanic tried. He really did, but every time that he started to get comfortable and started to drift off a clap of thunder would shatter his relaxation or a fleeting thought about something else he should pack in his mechanic’s bag popped into his head. Then the notion of sleep would be chanced away for at least the next 30 minutes. In the end all Maru could do was tried to reach a meditative state. One where he emptied his mind as he watched lightning splash shadows across his hangers walls. 

Maru worked at his meditation exercise for at least the next two hours, trying to chase the imagines of a smashed trainee SEAT and a leaking helicopter from his mind. He failed. The only thing that mechanic managed to do that night was learn that he sucked at meditation.

* * *

 

The sky was starting turn from the black of night, to the pale gray of a stormy morning. The Smokejumpers snapped awake to a sound that would stop the engines of most vehicles. It was the gurgling, choking coughs of their jump plane struggling to breathe. While the entire crew had extensive first aid training, Maru had seen to that, the mechanic had focused on teaching them how to deal with the types of injuries that you would expect to see on the fire line so none of the ground pounders had any idea what was going on. All they knew was Cabbie should never shutter this bad, ever.

“Drip, Avalanche, Blackout. Go find help now!” Dynamite barked and the male members of the ground team instantly split up heading in different directions to increase their chances of finding someone who would have any clue how to help their ‘Uncle.’

In the mean time, Dynamite and Pinecone worked to remove the tarps covering the leading edge of Cabbie’s wings in hope that exposing his air intakes would help relieve some of the big planes discomfort. It didn’t. He still gasped as though he couldn’t actually get air into his intake systems. Cabbie was also clearly awake through all of this, though his eyes were squeezed shut in pain. Though the ATV doubted that the plane had enough breath to tell them what in the world was going wrong with him.

Slag, Dynamite thought as she leaned herself against the C119’s cheek and used the soothing voice that she usually used to talk down panicking ground team trainees. “Come on Cabbie, breathe for me. I know you can do it.” 

* * *

 

Dusty had quieted down at some point during the night, leaving Blade sitting perched on a ledge talking to himself…again. The first line of storms had past and with it the lightning and thunder. It was now replaced dark low hanging clouds that were producing a perpetual drizzle. Oh, and the temperature had dropped significantly. It wasn’t cold enough to be dangerous, but the still raw burns on his skin made the helicopter more susceptible for to a chill.

Blade had been shivering bad enough that he took him a long while to realize that there were new noises in the forests. The deep thrumming noise of heavy equipment winding their way up the mountain roads should have stuck out in National Park that had been fully evacuated. Still, Blade didn’t notice that he had company until a member of the road crew called him over the radio.

 _“Good morning Chief.”_ A disembodied voice crackled over the air to ground band.

“What are you doing down there?” Blade didn’t even bother wasting time on pleasantries this part of the park supposed to be closed. Technically he wasn’t even supposed to be there.

 _“What does it look like we are doing?”_ The vehicle on the other side of the radio gave the low purring chuckle that only a heavy dozer or perhaps a track loader could manage. _“We are building a road.”_  

Sure enough, on the far side of the wooded expanse in front of him Blade could spot a cluster of heavy equipment sporting the park service road crew’s green and white livery. Moments later he heard the first tree of the park’s newest road falling to the ground. The race to rescue Dusty had truly begun.

* * *

 

“PICKLES WE NEED YOUR HELP!”

Many of the cargo planes and tankers groaned and a few bothered to open their eyes to glare at the little dozer. One green and red marked cargo plane did move to extract himself from clump of aircraft though.

“Congratulations Avalanche. I think you just managed to wake up the entire airstrip.” The large cargo plane yawned as he ducked his wing under the last obstacle and rolled onto an open space on the apron. “What do you need?”

“SOMETHINGS WRONG WITH CABBIE.”

“And you are getting me why?” He asked still blinking sleep from his eyes.

“BECAUSE YOU WERE THE ONLY PERSON HERE THAT WE COULD THINK OF.”

Well, Pickles couldn’t fault the dozer’s logic, even when the C-130 wished that the logic hadn’t dragged him out of some of the few moments of sleep he had gotten during the storm. Perhaps after he went and solved whatever the problem was he could get a big mug of coffee. The coffee might help him feel like he was in the correct time zone. 

With coffee on the brain Pickles looked down at Avalanche. “Lead on Macduff.”

* * *

Maru was on his 9th cup of coffee by the time that Windlifter started stirring in his own hanger. The tug had packed and repacked his mechanic’s bag a half dozen times and probably would have paced a hole in the pavement if the Skycrane would have taken too much longer.

“Are you ready?” Windlifter yawned as he liberated a large mug of coffee from the main hanger and started to stretch his rotors. 

“Will I ever ready to do this?” Then when Windlifter opened his mouth to speak, Maru snapped. “Don’t answer the question’s rhetorical.”

Windlifter, always the stoic on the team simply shrugged as he went and fetched the small vehicle harness. Maru helped the big chopper get all of the straps secured to the hook in points along his frame giving each one a good tug to make sure they were snug. While the mechanic was normally sure of his strap work, he was particularly precise today. Something to do with the fact that Maru was a bit of a nervous flyer under the best of circumstances and hanging suspended under the belly of a Skycrane could never be considered to be the ideal, no matter what Drips opinion on the matter was.

The harness in place, Maru double checked to make sure that all of his equipment and satchel were secured. While there shouldn’t be any tourist left in the park to drop anything on, that didn’t mean that he couldn’t accidently drop a drill on some unsuspecting fire apparatus’s hood. Plus Maru kind of doubted that after the laundry list of repairs he was going to be completing on the various members of the Air Attack Team he was going to have any budget left to replace tools that he had carelessly dropped.

If any of them still had a job at the end of this fiasco was a nagging thought that tugged at the back of his mind, but Maru did his best to shove it back into a corner where he could continue to ignore it. Convinced that he was a satisfied as he was going to get with the strapping job, Maru allowed Windlifter to pull him into the sky.

As soon as the Maru’s wheels left the tarmac he was determined to give Blade an earful about making the mechanic make a field call.

* * *

 

 

Cabbie slowly awoke to the sound of a verbal warzone, which was doing nothing to alleviate his pounding headache.

“Stop yelling, please.” Cabbie hissed through gritted teeth, but instantly regretted speaking. It made his intake’s burn sending him into a painful coughing fit. The old plane’s vision grayed out. He could tell that the people around him were trying to communicate with him. There was the pleasant hum of an engine where one of smokejumpers pressed against his starboard side and change of air current that only came when a much larger plane took you under its wing.

Knowing he was safe Cabbie decided that at the moment his best option was to close his eyes and let the darkness pull him under. Maybe when he woke up next he could finally breathe and his head wouldn’t hurt so much. If he still felt like crap when he next opened his eyes, well, he could try to find some solutions then. For right now Cabbie trusted the Smokejumpers to protect him, which allowed him to peacefully pass out on the tarmac.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have to admit that I really, really love the Smokejumpers in this chapter, the are so cute when they are sleeping. Well onto our regularly scheduled aerospace factoids. Not all patches of airspace are created equal. Airspace is divided into a number of classes. We will be covering the standard A through F classes today and we will dive into the specifics of special use airspace in the next post.
> 
> Class A= Anything between 18,000 feet and 60,000 feet sea level. Class A is an area of airspace that is dominated by large aircraft traffict and requires you to be under the guidance of ATC (Advanced Transport Controller). Any aircraft flying at that height are also flying under instrument conditions.
> 
> Class B= Is the area around a major airport. If you want to enter a Class B airspace you request permission of ATC and you can be denied access. While you are in Class B airspace you are given explicit instructions to make sure that you don't run into anyone else who is trying to land or take off. 
> 
> Class C= Is the area around a smaller tower controlled airport. You need to have two way communication with ATC before entering, but you don't necessarily need explicit permission or instructions to enter the airspace. 
> 
> Class D= An area around a minor airport with tower that primarily services small aircraft. Propwash Junction is probably Class D.
> 
> Class E= Any controlled airspace that is not designated as A, B, C, or D. May be used for a towerless airport. Also used for National Parks, so Piston Peak is Class E airspace.
> 
> Class F= Not used in the US, but used in other countries to indicate airspace with special uses.
> 
> Class G= Pretty much every where else. You can fly where you want to fly as long as you stay above 1000 ft above the ground, have a navigation beacon so other planes can see you, and avoid things (like tall buildings) that are sticking up out of the ground.
> 
> Well, I hope that you have enjoyed this little lesson about airspace classes. I hope you will join me in the next chapter where I will cover types of special airspace designations.


	7. With Baited Breath

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cabbie's situation goes from bad to worse, as the Smokejumpers try to figure out what is going wrong.

The moment that Cabbie went slack on his wheels was the moment various fire fighting apparatus and equipment surrounding him panicked.

“Cabbie! Coronel, don’t you dare pass out on me! Cabbie!” Every single one of Pickles’ flaps where up and bristling as he tried to nudge his friend and former CO awake. Around him Cabbie’s little dirt beasties were practically vibrating with pent up emotion.

“What in the slag is going on?!” The T-6 Texan might have been significantly small than any other aircraft on the tarmac, but there was no doubt the Air Boss was in charge. When his voice snapped across the crowd everyone else shut up.

There was a long pause before anyone dared to breathe let alone move, then Dynamite wasted no more time and was quickly nose to nose with the Texan giving a brief.

“Go rouse the Red Cross tugs out of their bunks and get them on the problem.” The Air Boss barked.

“It was you Red Cross idiots that got us into this mess.” Pinecone’s engine purred dangerously as she spoke. Avalanche’s treads were directly next to hers creating an intimidating barrier of pissed off Smokejumper. “Why should we trust them now?”

“Your choices are kind of limited.” A pickup truck from Logistics rumbled quietly.

“Esto es loco!” Blackout spat. “Are any of them certified to actually work aircraft engines?”

“No, but…” The pickup admitted.

“It is not like we have that many options for emergency medical personal.” The Texan tried to put this argument to bed.

“CalFire.” Pickles interjected.

“What?” Several apparatus looked at Pickles in confusion.

“CalFire is running the relief station, correct?” Several vehicles nodded yes at the C-130’s question. “I am betting with their cross training at least one of their Rehab Units has more experience with aircraft engines than all the Red Cross tugs on based combined.”

“Yes, but they are only supposed to do medical on their own vehicles.” Another member of Logistics tried to explain. “The Red Cross is in charge of general medical issues. It is the way we set up the incident command…”

“I don’t give a Guppy’s Aft about how you set up your Incident Command Structure for this incident!” Pickles hissed. “Not when following it to the letter is causing a good plane to suffer.”

“Enough!” The Air Boss glared up at the C-130, who glared right back down at him. “We will talk to CalFire and see if they have someone willing to give technical assistance, but in the mean time we are not throwing the chain of command out the window…”  
  
Then Cabbie stopped breathing and all bets were off.

* * *

 

Every member of the Piston Peak Attack Team was incredibly loud in their own way. Avalanche was the most obvious; the kid’s volume control was permanently cranked on rock concert. For Patch, Maru, and Dynamite it was the fact they had stereos that could be turned up loud enough to drown out Avalanche. At the moment Maru was experiencing one of the few things to challenge the volume of one of Patch’s rock ballads when the ground pounders had rubbed her wrong.

The thunder of Windlifter’s blades cutting through a still stormy sky was deafening. Mounted under the great helicopter’s belly Maru suspected that the only reason the either vehicle could communicate was the fact that both of them were mounted with internal mikes.

“Give me a pass of the crash site.”

Windlifter didn’t bother replying, he just moved to make a slow pass of Dusty’s crash trajectory. It looked bad, but Maru had seen worse. It was true that the aircraft hadn’t survived those particularly bad crashes, but the mechanic decided to not dwell on that fact.

The sky crane then suspended Maru over their downed trainee SEAT. They were too far up to see too much detail, but the tug checked his desire to get closer. The helicopter knew his limits and would get Maru as close as he dared given the choppy turbulence. Even given the distance, the mechanic was able to pick up some hopeful signs. It looked like Dusty was mostly in one piece. It also looked like he had tried to move at some point, which meant that he had at least survived the initial impact. Satisfied that he wasn’t going to get any more information about Dusty from a visual inspection, Maru gave his next order.

“Okay, let’s take a look at Chief.”

Windlifter turned, banking towards the nearby cliff and the bright red helicopter sheltering among its ledges.

* * *

 

When a car stopped breathing it was a problem, when an airplane stopped breathing it was an emergency on a completely different level. An aircraft could survive a lot, but loss of air circulation was not one of them. Often times you only had minutes to correct the problem before you faced fatal consequences. This was particularly true for a C-119 who didn’t have a secondary cooling system.

Faced with a life and death emergency, many of the vehicles on the tarmac froze. While many of the vehicles were great a thinking on their tires in an emergency, when faced with something completely outside of their training they struggled to make traction. Then out of a crowd, a Rehab Apparatus wearing CalFire insignia pushed himself through and started to examine Cabbie’s wings.

“Get me a welding torch.” The Rehab unit informed one of the Red Cross kids that was staring up at him. When the tug didn’t move fast enough the larger vehicle brought his engine up to a roar. “If you want to save him get me a welding torch now!”

“What is wrong with him?” Someone from the crowd asked nervously.

“You, with the saw.” The apparatus pointed his antenna towards Blackout.

“Yes you, is that blade rated for metal?” Blackout nodded, and found himself being motioned over.

“Have you ever done emergency surgery before?” Blackout shook his canopy vigorously in the negative.

“Hopefully this will be your only experience then. I need you to cut here, here, here.” The apparatus made marks on Cabbie’s skin with his antenna, Blackout did his very best to follow the instructions exactly. He was shaking by the time the last cut was made, but he didn’t have time to dwell on that. “Now go make identical cuts on the other wing.”

* * *

Maru was afraid of heights. It wasn’t something he liked to admit, and there was several members of the base (aka smokejumpers) who the mechanic really hoped never found out about said fear. Most of the time Maru did a really good job of hiding his discomfort, but Blade had known the tug long enough to pick up on the slight signs of stress caused by having to do emergency repairs on the edge of a cliff.

“You know you didn’t need to come out here.”

“You are still losing fluids.” Maru didn’t even bother looking up as he rummaged through his tool bag.

“It’s a slow leak.” Blade muttered under his breath.

“After what you have just been through any leak is a concern. Under normal situations the prop strike damage alone would have equaled an entire engine teardown, then there is the damage to your hydraulics…” Maru cut his rant short when he noticed that Blade’s eyes were drifting closed. The mechanic gave the helicopter a good thawp with his wrench to get his attention. “And you are not even listening to me.”

“What?” Blade didn’t even pretend that he had been tracking as he yawned.

“Seriously, are you trying to kill yourself? Don’t answer, drink this instead.” Maru nudged a straw towards the Chief’s mouth. “Really, after getting severe burns you think would be able to jump back to into being the hero.” The mechanic sighed. “Chrysler, sometimes it feels like the entire slagging team has a death wish.”

“Kind of in the job description.”

“Ut ceteri vivere possint.” Maru pulled out of Blade’s hatch for a moment and looked out across the line of damaged trees that marked Dusty’s crash site. “That others might live…sometimes I wish that you guys had some sense of preservation instinct left.”

“Does he even have a chance?” Blade followed the tug’s gaze.

“Hard to say.” Maru threw himself back into his work. “Catastrophic failure of the engine due to loss of the gear box is so incredibly rare in small fixed wings. I know that in planes the condition isn’t instantly fatal like it would be in a chopper, but I also know that unless I can get it fixed Dusty will never fly again. For a plane that may be cursing him to a fate worse than death. When the rumblers down there finally get him out of the trees I will be looking at a rebuild so significant that I almost don’t know where to start.”

“Almost?” Blade

“Well I am a mechanic aren’t I?” Maru gave a mournful smile. “Plus, small prop planes are actually some of the most robust aircraft out there and Dusty here was built to bush a plane spec which is the only reason there is a chance that we may be able to save him.” Maru shrugged as he dug his tines deeper into Blades side trying to feel around for the wet patch that would identify the leak. “We got lucky boss. If he was a helicopter or even a heavy that impact would have killed him instantly.”

Blade scanned the burnt park landscape and tried not to wince when Maru brushed against still tender areas of his inner workings. “Right now I don’t feel like we have been lucky.”

“That is because you are a slagging idiot.” Maru said as he clamped down hard enough that Blade yelped and almost jumped. This earned him a glare from his mechanic. “Well, I have found the leak and if you want me to fix it you better hold still.”

Blade knew better than to ask for pain medication. Instead the helicopter settled on his wheels, squeezed his eyes shut, and chewed on his lip as he allowed his trusted friend to patch his innards.

* * *

 

Cabbie gave long whistling breath, and several of the surrounding fire apparatuses let go of air that they didn’t realize that been holding. A few more cuts with the blow torch later and the old plane could once again breathe through both wings.

“WHAT JUST HAPPENED?” Avalanche broke the science.

“A procedure for the textbooks, boys.” CalFire Rehab apparatus sighed, settling lower on his tires. When he got nothing but blank stares from the crowd the vehicle elaborated. “Basically when our friend here had his filters removed he started breathing in a large quality of fly ash, and then when the storm came here he also breathed in a boat load of water. While both of those things would cause a plane to be uncomfortable, especially one which is a much as an air breather as a C-119, neither should cause fault issues…”

“BUT TOGETHER…” Avalanche voice trailed off as the full realization of what had just happened dawned on him. The dozer’s eyes flicked between the mechanic and the still unconscious jump plane.

“What?!” Dynamite tried to coax an answer out of her team’s heaviest member.

“Cabbie’s intake system was getting filled up by cement!” Drip stared up at their ride in horror.

“How is that even possible?” Pickles practically growled.

“When exposed to water, fly ash solidifies into a proto-cement. Cemented filters is something that I expect to see in road crews and ground pounders, in fact their intake systems are specifically designed help prevent this type of damage. This is why I expected some of your heavy equipment was familiar with the condition.” The apparatus nodded toward Drip and Avalanche. “This type of thing is incredibly rare in aircraft because they are usually flying above all the gunk. That said, I have seen it twice in helicopters and I have read reports of it happening in fixed wings around volcanoes, but never something like this. This was an act of extreme negligence.”

Everyone was silent as the vehicles words sunk in. The whole crowd was upset, but those that knew the old warplane were feeling particularly sick knowing that Cabbie had nearly just suffocated in front of them. Instinctively the ground team rolled up snug against their jump plane, craving the contact and needing to feel the C-119’s shaky breaths.

“What do we do now?” Drip asked from where he had tucked himself next to Cabbie’s nose. The apparatus looked down at the little ground pounder and snorted.

“You are going to get your suspension repaired.”

“Are you sure there isn’t anything we can do to help?” Dynamite had to swallow hard to keep her voice from cracking.

“Get space in one of those hangers, and get on the horn. It is going to take me hours to take apart his intake system and chip out the cement. I want a set of filters on him by the time I finish, because I am not tearing his wings apart again because he has breathed some more ash in.”

“I am on the replacement parts.” Pickles interjected before anyone could speak. The cargo plane immediately started talking to the tower to arrange for flight clearances and was spinning up his engines. Though he was doing a good job of keeping his voice level, it was pretty clear that the C-130 was about ready to go and land on someone.

“PICKLES’ PISSED.” Avalanche did his best attempt at a whisper, which was still loud enough to cause hearing damage with prolonged exposure.

“I am right there with him.” Dynamite gave Cabbie one last gentle bump before heading towards the end of the runway. “Let’s go get a hanger cleared out.”   


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hurrah! Cabbie is breathing again. Now as promised I will cover special airspace designations. 
> 
> Parachute Jump Area- Any areas where parachute operations are occurring. They are usually designated areas on the map, but they can be temporarily set up in the case of parachute operations for emergency response. There are technically not flight restrictions within a parachute jump area, but pilots should be extremely cautions flying through them as nothing ruins everyone's day like running into a skydiver 1,000 feet AGL.
> 
> Temporary Flight Restriction- Weather you are working a forest fire, mapping a natural disaster, or participating in an air race, you really don't want extra aircraft flying around. In these cases Temporary Flight Restriction or TFR is put in place. A TFR prevents all but authorized aircraft from entering a given area with steep penalties for those that break the rules.
> 
> Restricted Airspace- An area of airspace that requires special clearance to enter. These may be test firing ranges, areas above hazardous materials, or military bases.
> 
> Prohibited Airspace- Areas that can never be entered except in extreme emergencies. An example, the White House is located in Prohibited Airspace. 
> 
> Alert Area- A designation for an area that is being affected by heavy traffic. Used to notify aircraft that there is a higher than normal risk of collision and that they need to keep an extra eye out.
> 
> Military Operation Area- These areas are closed to nonmilitary aircraft as they are used as training areas for military aircraft. They are often called by their acronym MOA on aviation maps.
> 
> Controlled Firing Area- Whether it be a rocket heading to space or a military firing range, it is best to steer clear of these areas to avoid accidentlly being shot out of the sky.


	8. Lucky To Be Alive

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It was touch and go for a while, but things were finally looking up. That didn't stop the smokejumpers from worrying though.

Blade’s leak, though awkwardly located, had been relatively easy for Maru to repair. The mechanic was able to patch it and get the helicopter’s fluids back up to snuff within 45 minutes. The tug then spent another hour and a half going over every square inch of the Chief that he could easily access, and even a few that required a bit of creativity. On some level, Maru was kind of convinced that the Blade was secretly trying to die on him and it help distract him from the heights as they waited for Windlifter to return.

After finishing Blades exam and waiting for a long 15 minutes on the cliff ledge, Maru was really starting question to his decision to bring a couple extra tools instead of a pack of cards. Not that he would have had anyone to play with. Blade was currently taking a much needed nap, which Maru would deny slipping him anything to induce. That said, solitaire had its perks.  

By thirty minutes with nothing to do Maru was about ready to call down to the road crew working in the valley and seeing if any of them wanted to swap stories. Though, the mechanic quickly dismissed the idea. The last thing he needed to do was cause a delay in Dusty’s rescue in order to try to cure his own boredom.

* * *

 

Blackout was snoring softly by Cabbie’s tail section as he stood ‘guard’ over tarp holding the various components of the C119’s intake system. Dynamite had situated herself just off the big planes port wing where she could keep an eye the old warplane. The mechanics had warned her that he probably wasn’t going to wake up until after Pickles had returned from his parts run, but Cabbie had a habit of surprising vehicles so Dynamite thought it would be best to be prepared.

“Go get some sleep.” Pinecone soft voice made Dynamite jump. She hadn’t noticed that the teletractor and the team’s dozer sneak up on her…which just went to show just how exhausted she was.

“I am fine. You two go get some rest.” Dynamite tried to stifle a yawn.

“WE ALREADY HAVE.” Avalanche gave one of his lopsided grin.

“Two hours isn’t much to be running on.”

“IT IS MORE THAN YOU HAVE GOTTEN.” Avalanche pointed out as he gave her a good natured bump with his blade.

“You haven’t sleep in days.” Pinecone was looking at her team leader with a mixture of worry and well meaning condescension. “You and Blackout are not going to do Cabbie any good if you are asleep on your treads, and he will wakes up needing some help.”

Dynamite didn’t want to admit it but the teletractor had a point. Not that wasn’t going to convince the ATV to follow the line of logic though. She was team lead and it was her job to make sure that every member of her team got the best possible care. She wasn’t about to go to sleep on the job when their jump plane was in critical condition.

“WE WILL WAKE YOU UP WHEN CABBIE WAKES UP.” Avalanche was looking at her with his big, green, concerned eyes and Dynamite knew that she had been defeated by the pair.

“Fine, Blackout and I will go find a place to sack out for the next four hours. Then we will come back and relieve you two.” Dynamite stared Pinecone down before she had a chance to protest. “Everyone on the team has been running low on sleep so we will run a four on four off until either Cabbie wakes up, we get new orders, or we catch up on our sleep debt. Understood.” 

“YES MA’AM.”  Avalanche practically quavered with pride as he threw a mock salute.  The dozer then parked himself directly in front of Cabbies nose, looking up at the big airplane with the same intensity that Drip used to stare down Windlifter during a staring contest. The sight kind of made Dynamite chuckle a bit, and she couldn’t help but wonder if Avalanche would still be loyally staring up at the big plane when the team lead came back to relieve the two.

* * *

 

It was midafternoon before the skies had cleared enough to allow the Highbird to get back into place. Once it did it quickly became clear just how badly the lack of communication had affected everyone.

“They did what!?!” Maru's shout made Blade jump a little.

 _“They completely gutted Cabbie’s wings.”_ Dynamite explained for the third time.

“And you let them do it?”

 _“Not like we had a whole lot of choice at the moment.”_ Dynamite managed to sound both pissed and exhausted at the same time. _“You know as much as I do that it is kind of hard to breathe through cement.”_  

“How is he doing?” Maru started fiddling with a nearby tool, a subconscious action he always did when he was faced with a problem that he really wanted to fix.

“ _A lot better now that he is actually breathing.”_ The jump team’s leader anger spiked on the last comment, but she quickly calmed. “ _Last time I checked he was finally sleeping.”_  

“I am surprised that you left. When a member of your team is down you are usually stuck to them like glue until you are sure they are out of danger.”

 _“Not much of a choice on my part. I got kicked. Apparently I needed to get some sleep.”_ At the mention of sleep Dynamite tried and failed to stifle a yawn which caused a ghost of a grin to flit across Maru’s lips.

“Now tell me darling who managed to get you out of the hanger doors?”

_“That would be ‘Lanche.”_

“Good man.” Maru gave a low chuckle. “Now don’t waste his effort. Go get some sleep, mechanic’s orders.”

 _“Roger that.”_ The ground pounder didn’t even bother hiding her yawn this time. _“Dynamite, out.”_

“Will Cabbie be okay?” Blade asked quietly after a few heartbeats, causing Maru to nearly jump a foot.

“Chrysler, don’t do that to me.” The mechanic glared up at the Helicopter.

“Maru.” Blade pressed.

“How long have you been awake and listening?”

“Pretty much the whole time.” Blade sighed. “And, Maru, I have known you long enough to recognize when you are trying to stall.” 

Maru rolled his eyes and gave an exasperated noise. “You know I can’t really form an opinion until I have actually seen him.”

“But that isn’t going to stop you from forming an educated guess.” The Chief skillfully tried to push all the right buttons. “What do you think?”

“I think Cabbie will probably be okay. He may be an old plane, but he is a survivor.” Maru shrugged. “That said, injuries that cause lack of oxygen to sensitive systems can be hard to predict.”

“So he might be fine, or Cabbie might be a vegetable. We won’t know until he decides to wake up.” 

“Pretty much.” Maru said far too quickly for Blade’s taste. “Well, now that the radios are up I should probably call the mechanic who is working on him directly and get a more technical update.” Maru was sober, but then he let his lips split in a sad smile. “As much as I love Dynamite, I wouldn’t trust her with anything more complicated than an oil change. It would be nice to get specifics from a vehicle that knows  the difference between a flap and an elevator.”

* * *

 

When Cabbie finally awoke, he wanted to scream. His intakes burned, his wings felt shredded, and he had the uncomfortable feeling of missing parts. The warplane’s eyes snapped open as he tried to search for the source of the agony only to be met with the sight of Avalanche sitting uncomfortably close to his nose. A small dozer grinning up like the ground pounder had just won the lottery just didn’t jive with Cabbie’s mental state. The plane tried to open his mouth to ask a question, but the only sound that came out was a harsh squeak.

“Don’t talk.” Pinecone stirred from where she had been sitting next to him. She used her boom to gentle stroke the side of Cabbie’s nose.

“THEY DON’T HAVE ALL OF YOUR AIR INTAKES PUT BACK TOGETHER YET.” Avalanche said emphatically, and loud enough that the sound echoed across the hanger and caused Cabbie’s headache to pound enough that he couldn’t help but squeeze his eyes shut in pain.

Pinecone, the dear soul instantly realized that Avalanches volume was causing Cabbie more pain than comfort and used her diplomacy to find a solution. “Lanche, why don’t you go and tell Dynamite and Blackout that Cabbie has woken up.” 

“YES MA’AM.”  Avalanche replied as he started to thread his way through the crowded hanger, though he did take a worried glance back at Cabbie when he reached the door of the hanger that made a little part of the old plane’s heart break.

“I am sure that have plenty of questions.” Pinecone said with her soft southern drawl. “And I can tell you that I ain’t the gravel munch with answer, but I am mighty glad that you finally decided to grace us with your baby blues of yours.”

The old plane was pretty glad for the jumper’s company as well, though he wasn’t quite sure why he was in such bad shape. The last thing he could remember was getting stuck on the tarmac during a large storm and breathing in a boat load of water. Still, rain water didn’t explain why his wings felt like they had been taken apart.

Cabbie wanted to stay awake. He wanted to find out what had happened to him. He wanted see the rest of the Smokejumpers and make sure that all of his ‘kids’ were okay, but the deep exhaustion of pain and injury kept trying to pull him back into the black.

Pinecone seemed to sense the problem that he was having and she clucked at him quietly.  “Grab a bit more shut eye. We will try to make sure that you are put back together by the time that you wake up.”

It was good advice and Cabbie saw no sense in arguing with it.

* * *

None of the Piston Peak Air Attack team was going to admit just how relieved they were to get the message that Cabbie had woken up and had positively responded to the smokejumpers. To do so would have acknowledged just how afraid they were of the worst possible outcomes. Now that they could finally stop worrying about the largest member of the team, everyone could now focus all of their worry on their trainee SEAT.

For Maru that meant it was time for Windlifter to come and pick him up so that the mechanic could prep his workshop for the major repairs that Dusty would require. For Blade it meant yet another night on the cliffs...

“Are you going to be okay spending another night on your own out here?” Maru asked as he triple checked to make sure that all his pouches were secured. To which Blade only snorted in reply. “What? You knew I had to ask because clearly you didn’t have enough common sense to keep yourself healthy during the first two nights.”

“The leak wasn’t that bad.” 

This time it was Maru’s turn to snort. “I am pretty sure that someday ‘the leak isn’t that bad’ is going to be your last words.”

“I am fine.” Blade tried to shutdown the conversation, knowing full well that Maru was going to remind him about the events of the past few days every chance he got. “Go organize your tools by color, or whatever you do when you basically have the base to yourself.”

Maru opened his mouth as though he wanted to make a witty comeback, but was interrupted by the thunder of Windlifter’s approach. The mechanic instead satisfied himself by sticking out his tongue at the Chief, as he started to buckle all the straps and ready himself for flight.

“Everything’s secure down here.” Maru said when was convinced that he wasn’t going to fall out of the harness as soon as Windlifter started moving.

“Roger that.” The Skycrane brought his rotors up to full speed, pulling the big helicopter out of his hover and plucking Maru off the ledge. The chopper then gave his boss the bobbing nod of a helicopter salute before turning his nose back to base. Leaving Blade to settle himself on the ledge, and prepare for another long night on the cliff face. At least tonight he could see the vehicles below him working into the evening building an emergency road through the forest.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hope you enjoyed the ground team cuteness. I am slowly discovering that it is hard to write a bad scene with Avalanche in it, but you are not reading these notes to listen to me ramble. You are here to learn something new about aviation. In the last couple notes we have been learning the different types of airspace. Today, let’s talk about the busiest airports in the world. We will be calculating an airport’s business by the amount of cargo in tons that were transported in 2015.
> 
> # 5. Icheon International Airport-2,595,674 tons-A solidly located airport that not only ships out Korean goods for the world, but is also considered to be the gate way airport for East Asia.   
> #4. Ted Stevens Anchorage International Airport-2,624,312 tons- The gate way between the Asia and its European and North American trading partners, the Anchorage airport routinely handles the largest cargoes planes in the world, allowing them to refuel so that they have the legs to get to their final destination.   
> #3. Shanghai Pudong International-3,273,732 tons-China is a huge market for goods, and while the Shanghai airport sends a lot of packages international, the reason it is a strong 3rd on this list is the fact it ships a lot of products by air for the domestic market.   
> #2. Memphis International Airport-4,290,633 tons-Originally built for military cargo, this airport has stayed true to its roots. Today it hosts Fedex’s super hub facility.  
> #1. Drum roll please…Hong Kong International Airport-4,422,227 tons-This airport is the main hub for transporting good across Asia, as well as the connector to send stuff from Asia to other continents. With a role like that it is little wonder that Hong Kong International Airport is the top cargo transport airport in the world.


	9. Under Your Own Power

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It is time for Cabbie and the Smokejumpers to head back to base. Will the repairs be enough to back to base?

For the third night in a row, Blade Ranger didn’t sleep much. The first night it was because the park was in flames, the second was because it was incredibly difficult to sleep during a gale. Tonight, well tonight it was because the night crew was out and about.

Anyone who tells you that airplanes don’t work a fire at night is lying. Yes, tankers required day light to successfully hit their targets, but there were some missions that were best preformed in the dark of night…like thermo imagining. At the moment there was a forest service Cessna Citation Bravo crisscrossing the sky over Piston Peak. If Blade squinted he could pick out the cuneiform tail against the stars and the Chief could hear her humming softly to herself as she worked if he tuned to the right channel. 

The road crew below him was a whole lot easier to pick out. They had their big spotlights out to make the work easier. The rumble heavy equipment echoed off the cliffs and the irregular crash of trees being pulled to earth provided a constant sound track to their work. It was clear that the road crew was working hard and making progress, but the forest was dense and even at their current breakneck speed it was going to take at least another 24 hours before the narrow emergency road would reach the crash site.

* * *

 

Cabbie was vaguely aware of the work going around him, but mainly just allowed himself to drift in and out of sleep. Even the sharp discomfort of removing each one of his various pistons barely caused him to take a quick intake of breath. But even when something hurt, Cabbie had enough practice staying still while getting emergency repairs that he never budged. 

There were a few voices that drifted in whenever he was on the verge of consciousness. Some were familiar. There was Pinecones gentle drawl, and Dynamite’s everything is okay voice. Blackout’s dialogue was peppered with quite a bit of Spanish which usually meant that he was either completely sloshed or exhausted. Given the situation Cabbie suspected it was the later. Then there was Avalanche. The plane suspected that he would be able to hear Avalanche even if he was in the valley over. Listening to four of his little ground powders argue was soothing, though the fact that he hadn’t heard Drip speak up yet kind of made Cabbie worry. A quiet Drip usually meant that something was truly wrong with the universe. 

There were a few unfamiliar voices too. In particular there was a gruff voice that Cabbie assumed was the mechanic working on him. It made the old C-119 desperately wish that Maru was here. After all there were not many tugs that Cabbie truly trusted with his engines under the best of circumstances. After having his inners exposed to the weather by a group of clueless mechanics the plane was feeling particularly cantankerous.  Still beggars couldn’t be choosers and all Cabbie could do at the moment was try to sleep through the worse of the repairs and pray that he would be capable of flight by morning.

* * *

 

Maru was pacing again. It was an impressive feat given just how little space there was to pace inside of the tower, especially given the fact there was currently two tugs in there.

“Go to bed before you wear a hole in my floor.” Patch was currently giving Maru her best, where you raised in a Mine glare…which usually meant that she was more concerned than the dispatcher would ever admit.

“I am not that bad.” Maru crossed his tines and stuck out his tongue in return.

“Oh, yes you are.” Patch roll her eyes at him then waved at the door before turning her full attention back to her computer. “Go to bed because Chrysler knows how much sleep you are going to get once we get our broken aircraft back to base.”

“Hopefully only one of them is going to be actually broken when they get back to base.” The mechanic added thoughtfully.

“And that is really going to stop you from doing a complete engine tear down on Blade whenever you get a chance, not even mention what you are going when you get a hold of Cabbie’s pistons. I wouldn’t be surprised if you keep him ground for a full week while you make sure that every single one of his bolts was tightened correctly.”

“True, true. Perhaps…” Maru started, only to find himself bumper to bumper with Patch glaring him down with a look that was all business.

“Go to sleep!” 

Occasionally, even Maru could admit when he was out maneuvered and the mechanic finally vacated the tower. He headed back down to his own hanger and figuring that he could go through his tool to make sure that he had everything he needed on hand. He actually got started on the task, but then, Patch had put on the soothing music and the next thing that Maru knew was the inside of his eyelids.

* * *

 

“Come on Cabbie, we know you are in there. Time to wake up for us.” It was Dynamite’s drawl that finally broke through Cabbie’s restless sleep. Even though it felt like he was trying to fly up through molasses he forced his eyes open. He was greeted by the sight of all five of smokejumpers sitting in front of him. The old plane was so relieved; he almost relaxed enough to go back to sleep, but his little gravel munches were persistent little buggers when they put their minds to it.

“There you, Amigo.” Blackout spoke trying to provide Cabbie a verbal anchor for him to cling to.

“WE WERE STARTING TO GET WORRIED.” Avalanches thunder was loud enough that it proved that Cabbie’s headache was still throbbing behind his eyes. The plane winced but it seemed like he managed to keep his smokejumpers from noticing…unfortunately he didn’t manage to keep the mechanic who had been working on him from noticing.

“What’s hurting?” The gruff apparatus gave him a thoughtful glare. Cabbie opened his mouth to speak, then remembered that his intakes might still be scattered around on the floor and thought better of that. That earned him an eye roll for the apparatus. “You can talk.”

“It…” Cabbie’s voice squeaked from disuse. “It is just a bit of a headache. Nothing to worry about.”

“You will speak up if it gets any worse.”

“Yes, Sir.” He barked. The apparatus met Cabbie’s steady look for a couple a moments and then, when he was apparently satisfied he transferred his glare to the jumpers.

“Clear out you lot. We’ve got some tests to do.”

* * *

 Two other road crews had joined the heavy equipment that worked for Piston Peak National Park. One of them wore the livery of the county, and Blade suspected if he flew close enough he probably would be able to pick out some familiar faces. The other crew, well, Blade didn’t recognize but they seemed to be work seamlessly with both the Piston Peak and the county teams. With the three teams switching off who was taking point on the road they were cutting through the landscape faster than the Air Attack Chief would have ever suspected would be possible.

* * *

 

Test, Cabbie grumbled to himself, was mechanic speak for what types of creative torture can we put unsuspecting planes through. Whether the word was uttered by Maru or, Clive the apparatus who was currently poking at parts under his cowls Tests=a whole world of hurt. Still Cabbie was willing to grin a bare it because it was far better to find a flaw in repair job or a piece that wasn’t fitting right on the ground, and then having to deal with a later emergency in the air.

Cabbie spun up his engines for what felt like the 100th time. There was still something wrong with them. There were some parts that were rubbing just a little bit wrong, which caused everything to run rough and his fuel consumption to be atrocious. That said, at this point Cabbie considered all of the aching to be a good type of pain because every time he faced it he was just a little bit closer to heading back into the skies.

 “You ready to go home?” Clive asked once Cabbie had cut his engines and the thunder of his props had finally died down.

“Really?” Cabbie couldn’t keep himself from blinking in surprise.

“Yep, from where I sit, you are about as put together as you are going to get until we get you back to your mechanic.”

It would be amazing to get back home. To settle his tires on familiar tarmac and sleep off the memory of the last couple of days in his own hanger, but there was one thing that caused the big plane to pause. “My smokejumpers?”

“What about them?”  The apparatus yawned clearly not taking the situation seriously.

“They are my responsibility I can’t just leave them behind.”

“Why don’t you make your wingman take them?” Clive said with a roll of his eyes. 

Pickles chose that moment to poke his nose into the hanger with a grin. “You didn’t really think that we would let you head back the Attack Base solo did you?”

* * *

 

Maru hadn’t realized that he had fallen asleep until Patch woke him with a good thunk on the hood. Startled into full awareness Maru went into full emergency mode trying to locate what he needed to repair.

“Calm down, you didn’t oversleep.” Patch sighed with eye roll, while handing Maru a steaming cup of Joe. The mechanic gave the mug a suspicious look, which caused Patch to give him another eye roll. “I didn’t poison it you big oaf.”

“You add flavored creamers to everything.” Maru glared back as he took a sip of the hot bitter liquid and determined that Patch had in fact given it to him black. “That fact alone makes any mug you handle suspect.”

“Honestly, you are the strange one. I mean who actually enjoys burnt coffee.”

“Cabbie.” Maru smirked.

“Can’t argue with that one.” Patch yawned. It was true for some strange reason Cabbie seemed to prefer coffee that was so over roasted that it was barely drinkable by civilized sort. Luckily none of the personal at the Piston Peak Air Attack Base could be classified as civilized so they were perfectly satisfied to drink gallons of the firehouse brew. “I think we can blame the Air Force for permanently destroying his taste buds.”

“Given your lack of military experience I guess that means you never had a sense of taste to begin with.” Maru countered, which earned him a sharp wrap on the hood.  “Ouch, that hurt.” 

“Good.” Patch stuck her tongue out at him. Then here expression got more serious. “As much as I would like continue this conversation about heathenistic  ways, I just wanted to give you a heads up that Cabbie got flight clearance to fly back to base. ETA, 45 minutes.”

* * *

 

In the end, it was decided that Cabbie would take one passenger back to base. Drip was still pretty groggy from getting a pair of sheared bolts repaired and the mechanics were nervous about the strain that a jump would cause on his suspension. The rest of the kids, though, were currently packed in Pickles roomy haul. 

Take off had been uneventful. Pickles had gone first so that the runway would be clear, just in case Cabbie had needed to make a quick landing. From the start it was clear that the old plane’s engines were running pretty rough. Still they were running smooth enough to travel the relatively short distance back to the Piston Peaks Attack Base and the only reason Cabbie was going to turn around now was if he was going to put Drip in danger. That didn’t stop Pickles from giving a couple of long concerned glances before the bigger plane took the lead of their little formation, creating turbulents providing Cabbie with gentle lift that helped to cut his abysmal fuel consumption.

 _“Fife One Papa, Papa, Fox, do you need any vectoring for your approach?”_ Patch’s radio transition interrupted Cabbie’s worrying about just how fuel he was chewing through.

“Tower…Patch, how many times have I landed at the base airstrip?” Cabbie sighed.

_“A couple of hundred at least.”_

“And what makes you think I need help this time?” He drawled in reply as the old plane circled the runway and prepared to line himself up to land.

“ _Point taken.”_ Patch didn’t miss a beat. _“Would you like me to put out some obstacles out there for you instead? Some trash cans maybe, or perhaps an oil slick or two?”_

“An oil slick would be lovely, unfortunately I don’t think that you have enough time to deploy it.” The old C119 allowed himself a low chuckle. “Cabbie on final.”

Cabbie’s landing was flawless, which was a good thing because after the past 48 hours the aircraft wasn’t sure just how many more ‘incidents’ he could take. He let himself roll across the tarmac eating up his momentum until he gradually came to a complete stop. The warm asphalt warmed his tires, and Cabbie sighed, thankful to finally be home. It was a perfect little moment, which of course meant someone needed to come along and spoil it.

“ _Col, I know that you are exhausted but I really need you to get your butt off the tarmac for me.”_ Pickles prodded and Cabbie had to keep himself from groaning.

“Hold your horsepower, and give me a minute.”

_“One Mississippi, two Mississippi…”_

“Okay, Pickles, I get the picture and I am moving my old aft of the runway.” Cabbie forced himself to roll of the tarmac and over to the side of the runway. Once he was clear he gave a mock glare up at the large cargo plane circling above him. “Happy now?”

 _“That is much better.”_ Pickles grinned down, then lined up for the drop. _“Bombs away.”_

A few moments later a series of yellow and orange parachutes blossomed out of Pickles back hatch. Cabbie eyes followed everyone as they drifted down. He usually didn’t get to see his ground pounders jumping from this angle. It was kind of fun to watch…not that he was going to ever admit that out loud. Especially in front of any of said ground pounders. Knowing them they would find some something tall to jump off in order to ‘entertain’ Cabbie sometime in the future.              

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, we have gotten Cabbie safely back to base which means that this story is rapidly coming to a close. We only have one more chapter and an epilogue to go! But before we move on to bigger and better things it is time for today's aerospace note. Here are the world's busiest airport based on number of passangers. Take a look and see how many of them you have been too.
> 
> #6. London Heathrow Airport-74,989,795 passengers-While we only focused on the top five airports for cargo, given the high number of readers in the United Kingdom it made sense to dip down to 6th place to include Europe's busiest airport.
> 
> #5. Tokyo Haneda Airpot-75,316,718 passengers-Also known as Tokyo International is used as the primary hub for business travel into and out of Asia. I also know from personal experience that it is also an excellent place to pick up some sushi when you are transferring flights.
> 
> #4. O'Hare International Airport- 76,942,493 passengers- Often challenging Atlanta for the most take offs and landings, O'Hare tends to handle smaller planes and thus smaller passenger numbers. But the distinction that causes O'Hare to be a bit notorious is the fact that nearly 20% of all flights cancellation or delays in the United States occur at this airport. So if you are flying in or out of Chicago make sure to bring a good book.
> 
> #3. Dubai International Airport-78,014,841 passengers- Connecting east and west, north and south, Dubai moves a whole lot of passengers through it's halls. But while it only takes the third most passengers it does boast the largest terminal in the world. Calculated by floor area Terminal 3 is the second largest building in the world. Add the fact that Dubai International is able to move all those people using only two runways and it makes this airport pretty remarkable.
> 
> #2. Beijing Capital International Airport-89,938,628 passengers-Even though this airport is a bit smaller than Dubai, after its renovations for the Beijing Olympics it sits solidly as the world's second largest terminal set up. With the rapid growth in number of aircraft going through this airport, Beijing may be able to take the number one spot in the near future.
> 
> #1. Drum roll please...Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport-101,491,106 passengers-Handling more than 260,000 passengers per day this airport not only has the highest number of people heading through its terminals but handles the highest number of the take offs and landings as well. As Delta's world hub this airport is not only a major US airport but also a major link between continents.


	10. The Last Mile

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Maru works on repairs and more smokejumper cuteness.

After off loading Drip at the smokejumper hanger, the little loader was still feeling a bit groggy after getting a couple of bolts repaired, Cabbie rolled up to mechanic’s hanger to face the inevitable. Maru was already waiting for him a couple of tool lockers already pulled out on the apron for easy access. Neither vehicle needed to speak; instead Cabbie simply popped open both of his cowls as Maru scooted his ramp over.

The two stayed there in relative silence for over an hour. Occasionally, Maru would let out one of his long winded curses when something didn’t meet his approval and Cabbie sneezed a couple of times when his irritated intake system was jostled the wrong way, but both vehicles were content to not interrupt the inspection with small talk. Unfortunately the Smokejumpers were not as patient. They were not talking, but they were practically hovering on the edge of apron practically quivering with worry.

“So what is the prognosis?” Cabbie asked after Maru had snapped the cowling shut on his port engine and started to work on the other side.

“Getting your engines tuned up is going to be a slag of a job,” Maru muttered still half inside of Cabbie’s other engines, “but it looks like they at least got all of your pieces in the right place.”

Avalanche gave an audible sigh of relief, but Cabbie was the one who spoke up. “That is good to hear.”

“I wouldn’t know about that.” Maru scoffed. “I am sure you are hurting a whole lot more than you are letting on. So we are going to pull out the good stuff."

“Maru, high grade is against the rules.” While Cabbie was actually craving the good stuff, unlike the mechanic he wasn’t particularly interested in breaking one of the chiefs cardinal sins. “Rules are rules for a reason.”

“Cabbie.” Maru voice was level, and the mechanic giving him a hard to read look. “With your engines like this you are going to have a metabolism that leaves even Windlifter in the dust. Besides, we both know that you have flown much more difficult missions with high grade on board.”

On some level, Cabbie knew everything Maru had just said was true. Still, truth didn’t stop the niggling guilt. There were a number of reasons why Blade had banned high grade on base. While many of those reasons involved ghosts that Cabbie wasn’t about to go poke, the Chief also had some practical reasons as well. Unfortunately, Maru logic was overriding Cabbie’s blind loyalty.

“Fine, I will try one barrel and see how I feel. Okay?” Cabbie finally relented.

“That is all I can ask.” Maru sighed in reply before yanking on something that caused Cabbie to yelp.

* * *

 

Blade hadn’t realized that he was dozing again until the road crew chief below him paged in on the radio.

“Ranger, am I right in assuming that you are going to want to fly your boy home?”

“If we can make that happen it would probably be preferable then transporting him by ground.” Blade yawned and tried to blink the sleep from his eyes.

“I kind of suspected that.” The heavy dozer gave a rumbling chuckle. “We have made a clearing that should be wide enough to make the lift built now. Wait about ten minutes or so and then that Skycrane of your spun up. I have a feeling that he is going to be useful.”

Blade looked down from his perch and saw that the road crew had in fact created an artificial meadow that was large enough for Windlifter to comfortable maneuver in. “You roadies never cease to amaze me sometimes.”

The dozer gave another deep rumbling chuckle in reply. “Well someone has to keep you muddropers on their toes.”

* * *

 

After he made sure Cabbie had been settled in his hanger and he had given Drip a quick look over, Maru retreated back to the tower. The mechanic needed space to think, and it was kind of hard to do with Dynamite pestering for more information of the condition of her team, Blackout and Pinecone giving him nervous sideway looks, and Avalanche hovering.

Yes, he knew that the jump team was stressed about their fellows, but did they really have to follow him around base? The answer was no, so he headed to the one spot they all had the common sense not to follow him…to Patch’s domain.

“So how is everyone doing?” Patch asked as soon as Maru had clicked the door shut behind him. The tug just gave an exasperated grunt in return. “That good.”

“Yeah, that good.” Maru scrubbed one of his tines across his grill before rolling over to Patch’s personal coffee pot. “You didn’t put anything weird in this, right?”

“It is straight coffee if that is what you are asking.” Patch rolled her eyes, which caused Maru to open his mouth to make a sarcastic remark. He didn’t

“Piston Peak Air Attack Base, this is Blade Ranger. Over.”

“Patch here. What can we do for you Chief?” The dispatcher replied without even missing a beat.

“Can you send Windlifter our way?”

“Wilco.” Patch, started to log the conversation on computer. “May I ask what you need him for?”

“We are about to pull Champ out of the tree and we figured that access to a bit of extra lift wouldn’t hurt.”

“I will go rig up Windlifter’s sling.” Maru sounded off he started up his engines again. Patch simply waved a tine in reply. She was too busy having a rapid fire exchange with Blade to pay much attention the Mechanic heading out the door.

* * *

 

Blade knew he was both literally and figuratively hovering, but Dodge, he was a Helicopter and an Air Attack Chief. Hovering was part of his nature. Luckily it didn’t seem to bothering the road crew working below him.

“Chief?” Windlifter’s spoke up as he approached.

Blade eyed the sling and webbing attached beneath the Skycrane’s belly. Once he was satisfied that everything was in order, the Chief yawed towards the newly created clearing. “The road crew is planning for you to make the pick up there.”

“Copy that.” Windlifter gave the quick bob of a helicopter salute and made a beeline for the meadow. This left Blade alone in his little patch of airspace. He continued to hover, because it was better than doing nothing.

* * *

 

Maru tried to head back up to tower to wait after getting Windlifter on his way, but one glare from Patch told him that he wasn’t really welcome. The dispatch tug was busy trying to clear the park’s airspace to allow Windlifter to safely transport Dusty back to base. She really didn’t have time to put up with a restless mechanic.

He rolled out on the tarmac and suddenly realized just how quite the base had gotten. It was late afternoon and given the fact the smokejumpers were on base there should be some activity. The fact that they were not breaking something got Maru’s hackles up. After a few long moments, Maru decided he should probably go track down the jumpers before they went and broke something.

He peeked into the Jumper hanger only to find it completely empty. The Maru looked into the main hanger but the only vehicle in their was Dipper, who was staring blankly at the TV as it showed reruns of some soap opera. By this point the mechanic was sliding closer and closer to panic. Then he paused and recognized a familiar rumble of muffled snoring. He followed the noise to Cabbie’s hanger and quietly cracked open the door to peer inside.

All smoke jumpers were snuggled under the wings of their jump plane. By the rumbles coming from Dynamite and Avalanche, Maru would bet that the lot was dead to the world. The mechanic was about to close the hanger door, when Cabbie’s voice stopped him.

“So they are getting ready to send Dusty back to base?”

“You have been listening in to the dispatch frequencies again.” Maru leveled a less than pleased look at the C-119. Cabbie was supposed to be resting, not sticking his nose into the base’s business.

Cabbie shrugged his flaps in reply. “We both know that I am pretty much always tuned in. It is the nature of my radio set up.”

“That still doesn’t explain why you aren’t resting?”

“I am resting.” Cabbie gave a long yawn. “I am just not sleeping at the moment. Why don’t you go check on Dipper? When Windlifter calls to let us know that he is headed back to base I will make sure that the jumpers are roused so that they can help you get Dusty into the shop.”

Maru gave Cabbie a long look before giving a reply. “Fine, but after we get Dusty settled you are going to head back to your hanger and get some real sleep.”

“That is acceptable.” Cabbie gave another yawn. “Now go check on Dipper. I have everything under control in here.”

* * *

 

The crane slowly lifted Dusty out of the tree, but even though the big crane was moving as gentle as he could the movement was accompanied by screech of metal scraping roughly against good. It was a sound that set every single vehicle in the area’s teeth on edge. Yet, no one dared to interrupt the process. The old crane knew what he was doing.

After five minutes that felt like an eternity, the broken SEAT was finally free of the branches and spinning slowly in the breeze. Then it was time to start the process of transporting Dusty down the makeshift road to the newly made meadow where the road crew’s mechanic tug and Windlifter were waiting. It was a painfully slow process, one that only ended a half hour later when the crane lower Dusty to the ground in front of the waiting repair personal.

Everyone held their breath, as the road crew’s tug mechanic popped Dusty’s cowling to determine the extent of the damage. In the quite it was nearly impossible not to flitch when the mechanic clicked the engine covering shut.

“He’s alive folks. I don’t know for how much longer, but for now he is alive.” The tug rolled away to give Dusty some space. “He needs to get to a mechanic who knows airplanes and quick.”

“Did you copy that Blade?” The road crew chief looked up to where Blade Ranger was hovering.

“I did.” Blade did not allow his eyes to leave trainee. “Let’s get him out of there.”

Windlifter engines whined in response as the Skycrane lifted himself into a hover, allowing the road crew to secure Dusty to the webbing below him.

* * *

 

Watching Windlifter bearing his precious cargo towards the air Attack base, it was almost as though time had slowed to a glacial pace. As long as Dusty was in the air, there was nothing that everyone on the ground could do but wait. That said, no one wanted to rush Windlifter and cause him to jostle the critically damaged aircraft cradled below his belly.

From Maru’s perspective it seemed like the two helicopters above them were going through a similar struggle. Blade was guiding Windlifter in with an unusually precise level of control. Behind him, Windlifter was clearly trying to find a balance between speed and gentleness.

No one needed to speak as the two helicopters came in for the final approach. Blade circled the landing area to make sure that Windlifter would not experience any unexpected drafts, then scooted to the sided allowing the Skycrane to slowly lower Dusty to the ground.

Maru didn’t need to give the jump team directions. They moved with the practice of training. Some Avalanche nudged his blade underneath Dusty’s fuselage taking the plane weight as Pinecone removed the straps, allowing Windlifter to move down the runway and land. Dynamite guided her teammates into Maru’s hanger while Blackout and Pinecone acted as wing walkers to make sure Dusty was not accidently driven into anything that could cause further injury.

No one spoke. Even once Maru had gotten Dusty secured in the shop cradle and set to work, all the members of the Piston Peak Air Attack Team could do was wait and hope for the best.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So we have gotten Dusty back to base and that is where they movie starts up. As a result this is kind of where the story ends. But don't be said, there is still an epilogue. 
> 
> On to an Aerospace factoid. After doing more research then I would like to admit I have discovered that it is remarkably difficult to get a full sized aircraft that is stuck in a tree out of said tree. The branches of the tree prevent helicopters from being used to pluck the plane out and cutting the tree down usually had the negative effect of crushing the airplane. Really the only solution is the one that the road crew used in this story. You create a temporary road to the tree where the plane is stuck, drive a crane on the road, use the crane to pull the plane out of the tree, and then drive the plane to an open area where the crane can transfer the load to another vehicle. Over all, while the system works, it is incredible dangerous for both the crane and the aircraft. Even a slight breeze while pulling the plane out of the tree can cause both vehicles to be totaled.


	11. Epilogue-Return To The Skies

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> With a repaired gear box, it is time for Dusty to return to the skies. The trouble is finding someone on base to be his wingman.

When Dusty had awoken again five days later, most of his pains had faded to aches and stiffness. His intake filters felt cleaner than they had since he had flown halfway across the country to get to Piston Peak and engine seemed to beg to be brought up to speed. Every inch of him was practically crying to get back into the air…but at the same time there was still that niggling feeling of doubt. Would his spars hold, would his wings take the punishment, would his new gear box work?

On some level, Dusty suspected that Maru was also having some doubts. The mechanic was hovering and running every test that the little fork lift could think of. Dusty had done his very best to patiently put up with it, but he was a plane and between the 3 day to get rescued, 5 days of repairs/sleep, and 6 of testing he was going stir crazy being stuck on the ground.

“Bring things up to idle. Good.” Maru didn’t bother looking up from his instrument readouts as he spoke. “Now let’s throttle it up. Excellent! Power down.” Once Dusty’s the propeller had come to a complete stop, Maru snapped his cowl shut and gave the plane a huge toothy grin. “Think you are ready to fly?”

“You really mean it.”

“Yep, you we are going to have Blade and Windlifter trailing ya…”

“You really mean it!”

“Yes I do kid.”

* * *

 

Dusty wouldn’t get off the ground quite as quickly as he would have liked. A few thunderstorms blossomed in the afternoon, leaving the atmosphere to unstable for a small planes test flight on a practically rebuilt engine. Then there was also the fact that the two helicopters where both pulled to put out spot fires and were not available to play wingman for a broken down aircraft.

Finally after two day of watching Dusty pace back and forth on the tarmac, Maru decided to bend the rules a little. Cabbie would be the one putting Dusty through his paces. It meant that there would be no aerobatic flying, but really Dusty probably shouldn’t be pulling high-G’s on his first flight after a practical rebuild anyway.

“Ready to go Kid?”

“Am I ever!”

“Good, I will follow you out.”

It was truly amazing taking flight it was truly amazing to fell the wind whistling past his wings. Behind him Dusty could feel the larger plane boxing his wake, before settling in a comfortable position off his port wing. They flew like that for several long minutes.

“So, now that you are up in the air have you ever participated in a rolling scissors maneuver before?”

“No.” Dusty replied wide eyed.

“Then you are in for a treat.” Cabbie said as he threw himself into the first steps of the maneuver. After a little coaching the two aircraft were comfortable locked in a spiraling dance…one which eventually got Maru’s attention and lead to the warplane to get quite a tongue lashing from the mechanic.

“Ground dwellers.” Cabbie muttered under his breath as he reluctantly broke out of the scissors and pointed his nose to home. Glancing back at Dusty and seeing he stare longingly towards the canyons the little plane had learned to love, Cabbie chuffed. “Don’t worry kid. You will back in the sky before you know it.” 

Dusty didn’t doubt him, but it didn’t cure his desire to stay in the air forever.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, that is a wrap. Thank you so much for joining me for the completion of my very first fanfiction story. You have all been amazing readers. Thank you for your comments and reviews. As a beginner your feedback (both positive and negative) have helped me figure out how to write stories that you guys are actually interested in reading. It has been a fun journey and I hope that some of you will choose to join me for additional adventures in the future.

**Author's Note:**

> Hi Everyone, I hope that you have enjoyed my first attempt at fanfiction. Any feedback you can give me would be greatly appreciated because while I am currently a search and rescue aerial photographer and have worked as a helicopter load master in the past, still have a whole lot to learn about writing.
> 
> Okay, now that the pleasantries are done. I would like to create a place where I can bring in some of the cool science and logistical stuff that have managed to slip into this story. Today I would like to focus on density altitude.
> 
> Density altitude is basically altitude that an air craft and its engines think it is at. It calculated by looking your actual altitude above sea level, temperature, and humidity. As the temperature and humidity go up your density altitude goes up and your aircraft's ability to carry stuff goes down. In a fire situation smoke also plays major havoc on density altitude, which plays heavily in this story. 
> 
> While most of the aircraft in this story have lift capacity to spare, Cabbie in particular seems to be dangerously close to having load issues. Based on my weight balance calculations, even with modified engines Cabbie can't take off fully loaded and fully fueled during the summer. Clearly he is flying, so the question is how? He reduces weight in the one way he can control, he reduces fuel load. I highly doubt that Cabbie has more than an 1/8 of a tank at any given time during the active fire season. 
> 
> Well I hope you enjoyed learning a bit about density altitude. If there are any other aviation topics that you would like me to highlight please let me know. :)


End file.
